Is A Part Of
I rarely link to e-commerce sites that do not give me a piece of their action (and usually save the ones that do for my commercialized right sidebar – buy a funny t-shirt, dammit!). But one particular product from Angry, a decidedly dada-esque yet pop-culture-aware Irish t-shirt and button printer, uncovered by the Giant Heads at mental_floss, via the Cool Hunting gadget-pornish blog, has not only caught my eye and won’t give it back, but also raises questions that really should never be raised in the bathroom.
It’s the “Celebrity Weighing Scale”. And I don’t mean kidnapping celebrities just to weight them on your own scale, because that would be wrong. And kind of pointless. And illegal in most states (Which is why Oprah has never been to North Dakota). No, look closely at the markings on that rather generic looking bathroom scale pictured to the right. Do they seem a little… odd? Well, look closer (in other words, look two inches farther down at the close-up of the scale’s display) and you’ll see that instead of numbers counting out pounds of kilograms, it has the names of celebrities, famous people and fictional characters who, one would assume, weigh the same as you. What a way to make dieting relatively less painful and more glamorous, right? Well, I don’t know… I wish I could see the whole “scale” of Celebrity Weights on the scale. I have reason to have doubts about the scale’s accuracy just from what it shows here: Hulk Hogan heavier than Mr. Ed? Not likely (and potential cause for a defamation suit). And Gizmo (I’m assuming from “Gremlins”) heavier than the Baby Jesus? Only if Mary’s-Bundle-of-Joy-and-the-Son-of-God was delivered about 6 weeks premature… which would then mean we should have been exchanging gifts on Groundhog Day… that hurts my brain (but it makes me glad I don’t take down my Christmas decorations until March).
Then there is their closely-related “Animal Weighing Scale”. First, they really should have some kind of disclaimer that it’s “not for weighing animals”. But there they are, silhouettes of familiar creatures replacing the numbers, ranging from a mere duck all the way up to a fat-old-pig. But wait a minute! Shouldn’t the lower weights be to the right of the zero and the highest weights be to the left? Do I smell a future product recall here?
This isn’t the oddest product from these Anger-Managing Dubliners. They have these sets of “favourite fonts badges” (or ‘buttons’ for the Irishly-impaired). Three of the four sets acknowledge some all-time great typefaces: Helvetica, Futura Bold and Grotesque Condensed; DeVinne, Caslon 540 and Bodini Poster; Precise, Amelia and Cooper Black.
But look at the fourth (Go ahead, it’s right there). Curlz, Bank Gothic and (shudder) Comic Sans! Suddenly my confidence in the Angerers as cool design leaders is shaken. Or maybe the garish color combination on these has some ironic meaning? Maybe when somebody orders these buttons, instead of shipping them, they have a qualified design professional visit the customer? I hope so.
I’m going to hold my tongue about the absence among these “Favourite Fonts” of the most awe-inspiring, incredible and all-around-really neat font ever designed by the mind of man, by which I’m talking about…
But there is one more odd thing about these Angry Young Men and Women of the Emerald Isle (I’m showing great restraint in not calling them leprechauns). They seem to have an obsession over something called “Bingo Lingo”, not related to the cable TV show that keeps Chuck Woolery off welfare. Now, nowhere on their site do they explain how it works, but it has something to do with phrases related to numbers. A lot of them seem to be related to what I barely know as Cockney Rhyming Slang (are there a few Angry Brits among the Angry Irish?), like “Lump and Jive” for 35 and “Made in Heaven” for 67. But then there are other number associations like “Heinz Varieties” for 57, “Old Age Pension” for 65 and “Meal for Two” for 69. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. And one of the “Bingo Lingo”-related t-shirt designs is for the “Celebrity Deaths Edition” which disects the numerical dates of these sad events into … again, I’m not sure what. But it does appropriately include the unfortunate passing of James Dean, which was the same day that Wendell was born*, 30/9/55… I mean 9/30/55. Stupid Angry Irish.
*an anecdote I’ve blogged about many times before but somehow keeps getting deleted. Is it the ghost of James Dean? Or a hacker fan of Richard Thomas trying to erase the existance of a very cheesy movie?
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