When did ping pong tables get hip?

I grew up with a ping pong table in the basement. I think having a ping pong table in the basement is in the Declaration of Independence or something. Right? It was good for an occasional grudge match with my brothers but other than that it didn't occupy a very big part of my life as a kid. It got replaced by a pool table some time when I was in high school and I don't think anyone mourned the loss.

Well a curious thing has happened in the last few years and of course I'm at a loss to explain it. Ping pong tables got hip at some point and I am at a loss to see the the appeal of them.

I suspect my BFF Jonathan Adler has something to do about it and despite the fact that we're on each other's Facebook Friends lists, I still have issues aplenty with the man's aesthetic.

Why Adler? Exhibit A. Here he is at home with Simon and that dog.

The eye rolling starts.

It's not just Adler. Here's one by Paul Smith.

It's a little precious, don't you think?

Here's another one pretending to be haute design and failing miserably. It's by Hunn Wei for the Mein Gallery.

And in what has to be the unholiest alliance of goofy trends in human history, here's one by Aruliden for Puma.

It carries a $4,000 price tag and has a chalkboard surface. Chalkboard paint and ping pong in one fell swoop?

I wonder if Apartment Therapy knows about this?

A follow up with Hansgrohe's Pura Vida

I wrote a column on the 22nd of April that was a recap of sorts of the sights and sounds of Kitchen and Bath Industry Show 2010 in Chicago. I said it then and I'll restate it here, the Hansgrohe PuraVida hand shower was the best thing at the show.

Every morning at the show in Chicago, Brizo's grande dame Jai Massela and I would head over to Hansgrohe's exhibit and get an espresso or two before the show opened. Without fail, I'd walk past the Pura Vida exhibit and let the water run over my hand. I was smitten. With a showerhead. I had no choice but to call it my personal best in show.

Hansgrohe's espresso bar at KBIS 2010

Shortly after I stated that in my blog post, Hansgrohe sent me a PuraVida hand shower. I write product reviews all the time and I don't expect anything in return, really. It was a generous gesture made even more generous by the fact that I'd already said nice things about the product.

Well I sped home and installed my PuraVida the day it arrived. No sooner did I have it installed I jumped right in. It exceeded my lofty expectations. It's a different experience to have a shower hit your back in privacy instead of your hand while you're standing at a convention.

My hand shower (it clips into a hook when I'm not holding it) has three settings I can click through by pressing a button that reminds me of the button on a wireless mouse. The first setting is a soft rain, the second is what Hansgrohe calls Caresse and the third is a combination of the two.

It's the Caresse that made me fall for the PuraVida. I don't know how to describe it so I'll show you instead. At :52 in the video below, a shower head similar to mine springs into action. It's a controlled stream that swirls.

It's also an engineering marvel that feels like fingers dancing across my back. In fact it's so convincingly finger-like, it rinses the shampoo out of my hair --hands free.

I couldn't be happier with this shower head and not just because it's an indulgence. Hansgrohe's patented system for mixing air bubbles into the water flow at a ratio of three to one keeps this a low-flow shower. I have been suing low-flow showers for the last 20 years and this is the first one I've ever come across that doesn't feel like a penance. Had I not known in advance I never would have guessed this was an efficiency-minded addition to my life.

So thank you Hansgrohe, you have a terrific product. And I have to say that as a specifier and as a consumer, it's good to know that Hansgrohe is more than just great product photography. Speaking of which, here are few examples.

Get me to Puerto Rico STAT!

Did you see this house in yesterday's New York Times?

It's the absolutely stunning home of Nikos Buxeda-Ferrer and Inés Rosas in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I never knew it until yesterday, but San Juan abuts a protected rain forest. The elegant Buxeda-Ferrer and Rosas home overlooks this protected forest and is still ten minutes from San Juan's downtown. It sounds idyllic frankly and you can read more about it is yesterday's Times.

Here are some highlights.

all photos by Moris Moreno for The New York Times

I think it would be safe to say that this is a modern home. It's also one I'm drawn to like a moth to a flame. I cannot get enough of those clean lines and enticing sight lines. I get it that modernism isn't for everybody, but it sure speaks to me.

Don't let the fact that I love it dissuade you from critiquing it though. I'm curious to hear from  people for whom this doesn't sing. Of course anybody's allowed to praise it too, but what is it about modernism that just rubs people the wrong way?

HGTV's Design Star spawns an uprising

The fifth season of HGTV's Design Star debuts on Sunday night. Yeah, I'll watch it. But it'll be the way somebody watches a train wreck. Here's the promo shot.

Guts? Glory? Glam? Come on, it's interior design; and hokey interior design at that. Can we please stop caging interior design in terms that conjure acts of bravery and daring-do?

Anyhow, Design Star has a panel of judges made up of HGTV's resident stars; Vern Yip, Genevieve Gorder and Candice Olson. They furrow their brows and act mean for the cameras as the contestants whip out poorly-executed rooms in a vain attempt to communicate their signature styles. Ugh.

I think the whole enterprise does a disservice to our honorable profession and the show would benefit from some levity. A whole lot of levity.

A couple of us were opining about the show on Twitter last night when @layersandlayers and @ZiaPriven and I came up with the idea to draft Joy and Janet, the Moggit Girls, to be judges on Design Star.

Any why not? They are already HGTV stars in their own right and they would counteract the sitting judges' mean-ness perfectly.

The future of humanity itself hangs in the balance here if I can borrow some of HGTV's heroism talk. If you're a Twitterer, join our movement. The Moggit Girls tweet as @moggitgirls and when you tweet your demands that they be cast to sit in the throne of judgment, use the hashtag #judgemoggits. If anybody has a better idea for a hashtag, let me know.

C'mon kids, let's start an HGTV uprising, a revolution. To the barricades!

Is this tub setting up your kids for a life of disappointment? The sequel.

On 23 April I ruffled a whole bunch of feathers by posing the not so rhetorical question "Is this tub setting up your kids for a life of disappointment" with regard to this very expensive "kid-friendly" tub.

I say yes, of course. Well it gets even better, because the same company who came up with the fire engine now has a princess' carriage tub.

Lord knows we'd never want a little girl to bathe in a fire truck. It'll turn her into a lesbian. Quick! Let's find something that'll keep her appropriately girly.

How did I manage to survive a childhood where I took baths in an iron tub surrounded by glass bottles of shampoo?

via Christian Montone on Flickr