Curious and Unusual Gift Ideas

[lowrey]

yea seems like the beige is listed as brown

[endersgame]

i think if i bought that rick bunny for a 3 year old, it would be destroyed in an hour..



got this instead and saved $680...
and it's made in france, whoa!

[endersgame]

i need help with another x-mas gift idea.

it's for my co-worker whom i've sat across from for 3 years and i still have no idea what he likes..

your suggestion would be for a guy in his 30's with a budget of $50. he likes techy stuff and spirit beverages..

[Faust]

a nice bottle of scotch.

[endersgame]

ok, i don't drink so please give specific names of spirits.

i know he likes gin.

also, we can increase the budget to less than $100..

thank you!

[lowrey]

I'm not a huge gin fan, but I know Hendricks Gin has a nice looking bottle and should be very high class, a bit out of the ordinary compared to the popular brands so should make a nice present.

[Faust]

ok, i don't drink so please give specific names of spirits.

i know he likes gin.

also, we can increase the budget to less than $100..

thank you!

ick.

plenty of good stuff out there - Macallan, Glenlivet, Alberour, etc. Just ask for a good bottle of single malt scotch. Any liquor store who knows what they are doing will sort you out. EDIT - we also have a whisky thread on SZ!!!

[Shucks]

^^ or if it's me you're getting it for, a nice cognac would go down well with me also...

[eton97]

my wife got me an indoor skydiving experience for a present (she has to go off-piste as i usually buy everything i want well before b'days etc)...fantastic experience floating/flying in a wind tunnel.....couldn't walk for 2 days after.....hard work on some strange muscles

[MetroBulotDodo]

Tobias Wong: conceptual designer

I would suggest any gift by Tobias Wong - the enfant terrible of the industrial design world, who died too young in last May.

His designs were witty criticisms of consumerism, the art world, and the system that produces art stars. It's pretty easy to buy his mass objects still.

I remember seeing his gold pills at a design store and being told that they were to be taken so the consumer "could sh•t gold." Such a prankster.

From his obit:
"A provocateur by nature, Mr. Wong operated at the fringes of the traditional design world, creating objects like a stack of 100 $1 bills, bound in peelable glue like a notepad; a gold-plated McDonalds coffee stirrer (a riff on the company’s plastic version that was apparently popular among drug users before being withdrawn); and an engagement ring with the diamond mounted upside down, so that the wearer could use it to scratch graffiti."

The last item he designed was a iPad case that mimicked a crumpled paper bag, for flying under radar during the those moments when you might run into your too-cool-for-school acquaintances on the F train to Bedford.


Anyhow, we lost a good one.

MBD

[Shucks]

wong to me represents everything i hate about postmodern, self-absorbed, witty, jokey, extravagant and ironic design-art. this type of design is disingenuous in how it presents itself as 'criticism' of consumerism, when it actually just panders to the same.

in fact, our world more desperately than ever now needs design that solves problems, not design that sits in a corner smirking at the world.

ipad-jiffy bag - gimme a fucking break...

[MetroBulotDodo]

Dear Aw-Shucks,

My favorite sour-puss. Why the hate? Can't we just communicate through the international language of...dance?

In any case, I respectfully disagree. What is this world when it can't tolerate a mirror held at a critical distance reflected upon itself?

I don't think it hurts for Karim Rashid or Phillipe Starck to see how some others might view their decorative art. I image them reading about the re-appropriations of their work in their 2 ton bath tubs and laugh a bit to myself.

I hardly think Wong was a disingenuous designer. I, for one, need to be reminded that consuming will hardly transform me into something greater than the sum of my actions.

And critique (and following that, action) *is* the stuff of world historical transformation, no?

I shudder to think of this world had no monarchs been recognized as simple rascals with bigger bouffants than anyone else and, central to their power, the support of key military men. (And no, I'm not comparing Wong to the French Revolution. That took thousands of Wongs, as it were.) So Graves makes design that solves problems: the problem of the lay Target shopper who doesn't have elite design in her everyday life. I'm hoping that he and other design prima donnas - in industrial design, as in fashion design - have at least one day in their careers when they have their crowns removed, a mirror placed in front of themselves so that they can see themselves for the asses that they are.

And self-indulgence?! That's like -- and I just learned this as an English-as-a-second-language speaker -- "the pot calling the kettle black."

And don't flip out -- "the pot" is in the first person plural.

Now, let's play nice here...

Yours, forever and ever,

MBD

[cjbreed]

also shucks, i would just say that there's nothing wrong with being funny. just because one designer is being witty, sarcastic and funny doesn't mean another designer can't be out there solving the worlds problems.

[Shucks]

I, for one, need to be reminded that consuming will hardly transform me into something greater than the sum of my actions.

indeed...

let me be the first one to use this word to describe you:

fashionista.

[Faust]

wong to me represents everything i hate about postmodern, self-absorbed, witty, jokey, extravagant and ironic design-art. this type of design is disingenuous in how it presents itself as 'criticism' of consumerism, when it actually just panders to the same.

in fact, our world more desperately than ever now needs design that solves problems, not design that sits in a corner smirking at the world.

ipad-jiffy bag - gimme a fucking break...

hear! hear!