Mad Men's coming!

Here's the Dyna Moe version of me reporting for work at Sterling Cooper.

Mad Men returns for its third season on August 16th and on AMC's website, there's an interactive tool that will allow you to Mad Men-ize yourself. Give it a whirl.

I can't remember a TV show that's mesmerized me as much as Mad Men has. If you've never seen it, you have a couple of weeks to catch up on the first two seasons. It's funny, everyone I've introduced the series two has the same reaction. After seeing the first episode, everyone says "Gee, nothing happens. What's the point?" "Keep watching," I tell them. After the second episode they're hooked. The action on Mad Men reveals itself in real time, nothing happens in the typical hour-long time frame of a TV drama. Stories arc over weeks and months and years and they pull me right along. Never has a group of unhappy narcissists (who look incredible by the way) strung me along like this. The sets are perfect and the action's set against the current events of the mid-1960s. The characters are so deliciously self-absorbed that few notice that the world as they know it is about to come crumbling down.

I think though, what I appreciate most about Mad Men is the creators' steadfast refusal to inject any 21st century sensibilities into this period piece. The sexism and racism are blatant and disturbing. The lone gay character is trapped and miserable; he knows that his secret would ruin his career and life if it ever got out. Pregnant women smoke, everybody smokes for that matter. They smoke and they start drinking cocktails before lunch (at work). Their kids play with dry cleaning bags and sneak drinks. Mad men doesn't have a sentimental bone in its body, and in an alarming blast of real-ness, time unfolds without regard to who gets squashed.

It's funny, by themselves none of these characters have any redeeming qualities. I take great care in keeping people like Don and Peter and Roger and the rest of them out of my life. Yet week after week I find myself sympathizing with who ever's the least reprehensible. It's great fun, really.

So go Mad Men-ize yourself and get ready for the return of the gang from Sterling Cooper.

Bloggery housekeeping

Two things. First, I wrote a guest post for the ever delightful Jamie Goldberg yesterday. In case you missed it, here it is. Jamie's blog, Gold Notes is celebrating its one-year anniversary and to mark the occasion, Jamie asked a couple of her favorite bloggers to write a column. It's an honor to be included with such august company, let me tell you. Adrienne and Susan Palmer, Kelly James, Amir Ilin, Joni Webb and little old me. Jamie knows some cool and influential people I'll say that much. I'm still getting used to the idea of being included with this crew of taste makers. Thanks for the opportunity Jamie!

Secondly, I am still looking for some more brave volunteers to write posts here while I'm away on vacation. I have nine days up for grabs and four people have volunteered to write a post. Ideally, I'd like to fill the time that I'm gone and I'd like to see a couple more voices added to the mix. I'm considering August 8th through August 16th to be an open mike night of a sort. You can write about anything you want to, your topic needn't be kitchen, bath or design-related. Got a good story to tell? Tell it here with my blessing.

The only real rules are that you tell an interesting or useful story, don't be inflammatory and respond to any comments your post generates. What could be easier? I don't want to know what you plan to write about in advance. I'm granting author status to any takers and that means you'll write and post your story directly into this blog without my editing it.

This blog is a big part of who I am and I take it pretty seriously. With that said though, letting go of my blog for a couple of days is a good exercise for me. So whattya say? If you're a new blogger and you'd like to drive some traffic your way this is a prime opportunity. If you're not a blogger but have always wanted to give it a whirl, now's your chance. If you just need to get something off your chest in public, go for it. If you're interested in sharing the spotlight, just drop me a line.

** Added later: If you're interested but at a loss for a topic, I have a ton of story ideas in varying stages of development and they range from interviews that need to be conducted, artists and people to profile and new products to consider and review. I will pass along any of that stuff gladly if you want to take a stab at being part of the New Media.

Meet the Frigidaire Flair

This is the focal point of a kitchen I'm about to start renovating.

It's a Frigidaire Flair and unfortunately, the ovens no longer work. Its owners decided to renovate their kitchen based in a large part on their frustration over not being able to find replacements parts and a service guy willing to work on it. *edited to add: the ovens DO work, it's just the springs in the doors are spent and won't stay in the upright position on their own.

It's unfortunate because the thing's in pristine condition. The owners are planning to sell it so if anybody out there's both handy and feeling nostalgic let me know, I think I can hook you up.

The Frigidaire Flair was introduced in 1962 when Frigidaire was a subsidiary of General Motors. The electric burners roll in and out of the appliance on a surface that functions like a drawer. When they're not in use, they just slide out of view. The double ovens (one's a full-size and the other's a Dutch oven) sit right at counter height. The oven doors lift up instead of swinging out. Aside from its unconventional looks, the design of the Flair makes a whole lot of sense and I can imagine that cooking on one is comfortable and efficient.

This is an ad from 1962. Frigidaire promised the Flair was The happiest thing that ever happened to cooking... OR YOU!

In an interesting side not, the Frigidaire Flair was the range in Samantha's kitchen in the TV show Bewitched. Here's a very proud Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha showing of her Frigidaire Flair.

Here's another set photo of actual food being prepared on it. Check out the open tray base to the right of the appliance in this shot.

This shot from the same set shows the oven door flipped up. Pretty slick!

What a cool appliance. I never see actual cool stuff when I'm looking over a room to be renovated and most vintage appliances I see are filthy and broken. This Flair on the other hand is in pristine shape. It's been loved and used by a woman who raised a family with food prepared every day on that range. Cooking appliances made today tend not to last for 40 years. But by the same token, people don't take care of appliances they way they once did either. So which do you think came first? Short-lived appliances or people unwilling to maintain the appliances they already have? Hmmmmm.

The Fabric on Demand sample arrived and it's fantastic

On 3 July, I wrote a profile of an Internet start up called Fabric on Demand. Fabric on Demand prints small runs of user-designed fabrics affordably. After that post appeared, I started a lively e-mail correspondence with Rysa Pitner from Fabric on Demand. During the course of these exchanges, Rysa offered to run a sample yard of any design I wanted to submit to them via their website.

To keep this a group exercise, I put out a request for designs from my readers the following day. I knew that I wanted something brightly colored and on a white background because I wanted to see how this process worked clearly. The ever delightful and energetic Kelly James from Design Ties sent me some illustrations she had from a previous project that sounded like what I was looking for. In fact, they were perfect.

Kelly's design consisted of four pool balls, and based on her description I asked me to send me what she had. So Kelly sent me her medium-resolution .png files. Here they are.

I submitted the files to Fabric on Demand through their website. I asked Rysa to put them together into an half brick repeated pattern, though that's something I could have done myself. Fabric on Demand's website is extremely easy to use and that I didn't do a complete layout is no reflection on their site. Rather, it's a reflection on my being in a hurry. With that said, Fabric on Demand has an art department that's ready and willing to help anybody with the technical side of on demand fabric printing. There's nothing intimidating about this process. Use the website and if you run into a snag, they are standing by to help.

Within a day, Rysa sent me a hi-res proof and then an idea of how the pattern would look spread out over a yard of finished material.

Proof

Sample yard

I was impressed at this point and when I forwarded the proofs to Kelly, she got so excited she ordered a couple of yards for herself. She's planning to do something fantastical I'm sure, so be sure to follow Kelly's blog over the next couple of weeks to see what she does with her Kelly James original fabric.

About a week after I OK'd the proof, my sample arrived and here it is.

I am impressed mightily by how well all of this came together and the fabric sample Rysa sent me is perfect. I had these pool balls float because I wanted to see how crisp the edges would be once they were printed onto fabric. The whole print job is far cleaner than I was expecting. Further, the colors are richly saturated without making it feel like there's a ton of ink weighing anything down or stiffening things up. This fabric sample moves and handles as if it were an unadorned and unprinted woven sample. There's no real bleed though to the back either.

How they manage the level of color saturation they do while maintaining such sharp edges and minimal bleed through defies my ability to figure out how they do it. I'm stumped. All that matters though is that it looks fantastic. Fabric on Demand is really onto something here and if you've ever thought about taking a stab at fabric design I can't encourage you to do so strongly enough. Contact Fabric on Demand today!

Touch this faucet!

Delta's using a new touch feature on some of their new kitchen faucets. This feature is what Delta calls Touch₂O™ technology and it's pretty slick. Here's a demo video from Delta that shows how it works. I'll explain how it works in a bit.

So what's going on here is that the faucet and handle have an incredibly faint electrical current running though them. The current's supplied by a battery pack that's installed below the faucet. The power level is so low that it's imperceptible and since it's coming from a battery pack and not household current, it is physically impossible to get a shock from this system. Please make a note of that.

The lynch pin of this low-level current system is a solenoid valve in the base of the faucet. You can see the solenoid in section B of the illustration below. It's the box the water supply line runs through. A solenoid valve is essentially an electronic switch, and in this case it works like a master switch. When someone turns on the faucet, the solenoid comes to life in a manner of speaking. With the water turned on from the source and the temperature set, all you need to do to is touch the faucet spout or handle and the water will turn off. Touch it again and the water turns back on. Since this is a battery-operated system, the batteries will need to be changed periodically. Delta took this into account and integrated an indicator into the faucet. At the bottom of the fixture, there's a small LED light that shines blue when the system's activated. When the batteries start to go low, that blue LED will flash red.

There's also an automatic, four-minute cut off built into this system. If the water's left running for four minutes with no activity, it will turn itself off. A further cool feature of this technology is that it never takes over the manual operation of the faucet. At any point, someone can turn on and off the faucet conventionally, at the lever.

The whole point of this kind of switching technology is to be able to avoid touching a faucet handle with the dreaded "chicken hands." It's a perfectly valid concern by the way, "chicken hands" are an obvious source of cross contamination woes. Anybody who's suffered a bout of salmonella poisoning will tell you that practicing sensible hygiene around food is a very good thing indeed. Touch₂O™ makes it easy to be smart and sensible and congratulations to Delta are in order. You can read more about Delta's new products on their website.

Finally, someone asked me on Friday if one of these faucets can be turned on accidentally by a meandering cat. The answer's an unequivocal no and a better question is why do you allow your cat climb around on your kitchen counters? Now the answer's a no because a human being has to turn on the faucet's handle from the get go. Unless you have a cat that can turn on a faucet manually, you're fine. Well, you're fine so far as the cat turning on the faucet goes. Clamoring cats bring with them a whole raft of other cross contamination woes, but I guess that's part of the joy of cat ownership. Right?