There’s a toothbrush war brewing, at least in court. Proctor & Gamble, owners of the Oral-B brand, sued newcomer Ultreo for false advertising. They also sued Philips-Sonicare. P&G; is disputing whether the ultrasound technology, which is the differentiator for the Ultreo brush, is actually as effective at cleaning teeth as Ultreo claims. Their separate tests have shown different results, and now Ultreo is countersuing P&G; for disparaging their product. I don’t suppose anyone wants to say that they are just as good, and maybe not necessarily better than their competitors. You always have to appear to be the best.
DeBeers, savvy marketer of sparkly dreams, has been working their sales magic in mainland China since 1993. Starting from no foothold in a culture where jade and pure, soft gold dominate the jewelry landscape, the conglomerate is now placing diamond rings on the fingers of 40% of the brides. The average size and price per piece of diamond jewelry is also going up. You can be sure DeBeers won’t stop until everyone in the world has a diamond on every appendage, and then they will probably fund experiments that will allow us to grow extra fingers.
Boeing’s Surplus Store is closing on December 21st and the community of regular shoppers isn’t willing to let it go. Boeing has told Bruce Lane that they plan to sell surplus in bulk to large buyers in auctions and may sell smaller stuff on eBay.
A revival of Godspell is headed for Broadway in 2008.
In observation of Serious Eats’ National Meatloaf Appreciation Day (October 18th), girlhacker and dadhacker bring you our celebrated Buffy Loaf recipe. Created a few years ago for a season premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is a buffalo meatloaf from a basic recipe. We used to try to catch the somewhat regular buffalo sale at Fred Meyer and freeze a few pounds. Then we found frozen ground buffalo at Trader Joe’s but they stopped carrying it. Now we buy it at QFC and Whole Foods where they always have it in stock, sometimes on sale. It’s not cheap ($6-7/lb), but it’s healthier than beef, in fact its nutritional content is better than many other meats. That is why we top off our buffalo meatloaf with lots of bacon. Nice, fatty, salty bacon, usually the good stuff from Niman Ranch (available at Trader Joe’s). We’ve also modified the recipe for our son’s allergies, so it has no common allergens other than gluten (experienced gluten-free cooks should have no trouble modifying the recipe). Enjoy! Photo on flickr.
Retailer Target continues to rope in outside designers to keep up a trendy image. Keanan Duffty’s new men’s line for Target brings one of his role models, David Bowie, into the lower-price chain store. Duffty’s men’s collection debuts this weekend and includes a tuxedo, vest and pants inspired by the Thin White Duke persona, dress shirts and a trench coat inspired by “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and a button-down shirt imprinted with the lyrics to “Let’s Dance.” A $4.99 CD compilation of old and remastered Bowie songs will be sold alongside the clothing. (via Pitchfork)
An enlightening pop-up book, The Book of Lights is a coffee table book that turns into a little lamp when you open it up, designed by Takeshi Ishiguro.
About ten years ago, two women in California found the selection of nail polish colors lacking and decided to do something about it. Sandy Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems, sought edgy, dark colors to match her alternative tastes. Dineh Mohajer, a pre-med student in L.A., wanted to duplicate the color of her pale-blue sandals onto her nails. The resulting two companies, Urban Decay and Hard Candy, triggered a late ’90s nail polish phenomenon that took women far beyond the traditional reds and pinks. Urban Decay went hard core with color names like “Asphyxia” and “Plague”, cementing a trend started by Chanel’s blood-black Vamp polish, worn by Uma Thurman in 1994’s Pulp Fiction (black polish was already of course a signature of certain punk and goth types). Mohajer’s Hard Candy went soft and sweet, with a matching plastic pastel ring encircling their bottle tops and Clueless sensation Alicia Silverstone tossing the company a huge free ad with her baby blue nails on David Letterman.
In the years since, Urban Decay and Hard Candy were snapped up, at different times, by LMVH, the luxury goods conglomerate. Both were then sold to the Falic brothers who own Duty Free Americas. As we all know, fashion returns consistently back to old fads, so it’s no surprise that Hard Candy has released a “vintage” line that includes their original pastels in new, less toxic formulations. Urban Decay seems to have left the nail polish biz to its sibling brand, but Chanel unveiled Satin Black, a Vamp for the new millenium, to great hype and shortages last fall. As for those two women who wouldn’t settle for what was on the makeup shelves, Sandy Lerner retired to a spread in Virginia and Dineh Mohajer founded Goldie cosmetics.
The Guardian has a spot-on article about the use of classical music in movies. “Handel indicates that the snobs have arrived, Mahler that someone is about to die, but not before pouting about it, and Wagner is a sure sign that big trouble’s a-brewing…Vivaldi’s ludicrously overplayed Four Seasons invariably indicates that the stuffed shirts are having brunch; Beethoven’s Ode to Joy announces that Armageddon may be just around the corner; and anytime an aria by Verdi, Bellini or Puccini is heard, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone is going to get raped, stabbed, blinded, buried alive or impaled.” It includes a list of the most overused works, starting unsurprisingly with Carmina Burana: O Fortuna, used “in every film trailer promoting motion pictures involving battle axes” and now “the biggest musical cliche of them all.” (Sometimes trailers do get their very own score. Soundtrack.net has a list of the most frequently used trailer music in their database.)
Much-lauded local restaurant The Herbfarm has redesigned their website and finally added official mention of new executive chef Keith Luce, though outgoing chef Jerry Traunfeld, who is opening is own place in Seattle, is still featured predominantly.