Donald Judd bought 101 Spring Street, a 5-story cast iron loft building, in 1968. He raised his family there and used it as a studio and office space until his death in 1994. The Judd Foundation is closing the building for a three-year renovation. Nicholas Robinson Gallery is exhibiting work by artists Judd had selected for permanent installation in his own home, and vintage photos and documentation of the building from the Foundation.

Here, for example, is a photocollage of all five floors in 101 Spring Street.

Alright, dollhouse makers, you have your orders. Now get crackin'.

Donald Judd & 101 Spring Street, through Apr 17, 2010 [nrgallery.com via mondo blogo who has a ton more pictures]

The reaction among Teddy Bear Artists to Kent Rogowski's Bears series, which consist of portraits of abandoned teddy bears turned inside out, runs the gamut from to .

But if there's one thing they can agree on, it's that a man who can inflict such violent harm on sweet, loving Teddy Bears--Bears who ask for nothing more than to be able to provide unconditional love and comfort to innocent children long after the no-good, drunk, abusive, cruel, selfish, and insensitive adults in their lives have done their irreparable worst and moved on--must have some serious unresolved issues from his childhood, and that he'd do well to seek professional counseling rather than unleash his demons on these poor, innocent, loving Teddy Bears who just--

As with so many victims of abuse, Rogowski's Bears continue to seek some pale semblance of love from the cold, indifferent embrace of the market. In addition to the book + limited edition photo combination mentioned previously, the artist has recently published some Bears with 20x200, the awesome online gallery run by my friend and art-for-all hero Jen Bekman.

Though they are sold individually, they are published as a pair. By not separating them, you can break the intergenerational cycle of pain and help the healing begin.

I just can't stand it ... modern "teddy bear" art [teddy-talk.com via @jenbekman]
#51 (Bears), Kent Rogowski, $50-$2000 [20x200.com]
Kent Rogowski's portfolio site [kentrogowski.com]

Previously, March 2007: Yes, bears were harmed in the making of these photographs

how McNuggets are made, originally uploaded by Jake Pierson.

This McNugget mold is apparently hanging as decoration [!?] in the McDonalds in the Madrid-Barajas airport.

Which means that at some point in their existence, McNuggets have the consistency of Play-Doh.

Perhaps it is Spanish pride in the gastronomical scientific genius of El Bulli that sees this transformation as an artistic event? I mean, In his Momofuku Cookbook, David Chang and Wylie Dufresne do have an entire section devoted to the miracle of meat glue.

Chicken McNuggets [wikipedia]

Wow, Spring is springing on the East Coast, about damn time, too. What alarming/depressing/overdetermined/freakout-y parenting news could possibly ruin this weekend?

• The study that showed that good, involved dads hurt working moms' self-confidence, for one. It's because of some outdated, internalized sense of societal expectations for women-- and dads not praising moms enough. [Yahoo/LiveScience via dt reader dt]
• More kids are getting much fatter much younger. [eurekalert]
• "Methamphetamine abuse" during pregnancy causes more fetal brain damage than alcohol "abuse," so use the drug of skanky backwoods self-destruction in moderation. [eurekalert]
• Babies respond more closely to music than to speech, which I am sure somehow proves that BabyPlus is real and worth $150. livescience]
• The JPMA sent out a press release titled, "JPMA Provides Kitchen and High Chair Safety Tips," which can only mean one thing...
• Sure enough, one of its largest members just announced the recall of 1.2 million JPMA-Certified high chairs because the screws come out, the legs collapse, and the chairs dump the kids on their heads. [CPSC: Graco Recalls Harmony™ High Chairs Due to Fall Hazard"]
• "Who been puttin' out their coals on my baby? I said, who been puttin' out their coals on my baby?" [copyranter via the awl]
• Scientists have given fruit flies glow-in-the-dark sperm. A kit for humans is expected at Spenser's within 3-4 years. [sciencedaily]

I'm stoked that Threadless, everyone's favorite crowdsourcing t-shirt cult, is celebrating their 10th anniversary by selling all T's, including kids' for just $10 each. [Order by Saturday morning, 3/20 at 10AM CT!]

But I'm also kind of paralyzed by the choice. After surfing through 9 of 12 pages of kid shirts, the hundreds of unique designs have all become a hip, quirky, witty blur.

Unless someone stops me with some better suggestions, I'm going to end up with Adam Benjamin White's "Beat It." Which is awesome as a concept, but which I'd probably regret, either because the kid doesn't wear it, or because she does.

OK, maybe this one.

Beat It and all Threadless T-shirts are $10 at the moment [threadless.com via threadless pr]

DT reader Cecelia writes in a panic: "Celebrity Baby Blog is People!"

When the history of pro blogging is written, Danielle and Celebrity Baby Blog will stand at the peak. She correctly identified the most powerful active ingredient in the media hose the Entertainment Industrial Complex is soaking us with. Then she isolated and relentlessly reblogged it, refining the corporate giants' own addictive product to a deadly, highly monetizable potency. And then, at the peak of the market, she turned around and sold the whole crack trafficking operation back to the biggest kingpin of them all, People Magazine.

That was almost two years ago. Now with their new redesign, People has completely assimilated CBB back into the corporate product. And in case you're wondering how a shirtless Hugh Jackman frolicking with his kid on the beach feels about being relegated to the Moms & Babies page, People will be liveblogging the red carpet for the premiere of Van Helsing 2: Vampire Day Care next week. So subscribe to their Twitter!

celebrity-babies.com now redirects [celebritybabies.people.com]

The other day, I put on a blazer I hadn't worn for a while, and found a bloated plastic bag of moldering apple slices from a McDonald's Happy Meal. I actually found it somewhat comforting, because I'd remembered hearing about some locavore nerd professor or whomever who had a pristine 2-year-old McDonald's cheeseburger on his desk.

So I was pretty primed when DT reader Nate sent this photo of author Nonna Joann Bruso's Happy Meal on its first birthday. Her site's been offline both times I tried to visit it, but Consumerist has the scoop.

Happy Birthday To My Happy Meal! [babybites.info via consumerist, thanks dt reader nate]

It's the first day of the kid's kindergarten Spring Break and first--WTF, people?

Not to be all China about it, but seriously. Two weeks of vacation in March? What next, three months off in the summer to bring in the crops?

Kids need structure.

At least the whole clan doesn't have to get up at 6:30 every morning to get her out the door. [posted at 06:48 AM]

And at EUR199,900, I suspect it might be for sale for a little while.

True, it's the only Aston Martin Lagonda station wagon conversion in existence. And it was done by Roos Engineering, Switzerland's Aston Martin masters, in 1998-99 for a Hong Kong owner. [Roos has done two other shooting brake conversions: a V8 Vantage and a LWB Virage, and he's supposedly working on a Rapide--holy smokes]. And it was recently completely restored. And it only has 1800 km on it since 1987.

And 1987 means it is one of the last Lagondas, a Series 3, without the pop-up headlight problems, and with the third and final version of the futuristic instrument panel [the LED and CRT versions which preceded it having been known for their general suckitude, which is not something one likes to find in a $150,000 car, but the late Series 3's are probably the most highly refined Lagondas of them all.] And it has two A/C's and an electric rear gate.

And, uh, and.... You know, it is freaking awesome, but also ridiculous. And buying it for 200,000 euros would be the only thing crazier than buying ten normal Lagondas for 200,000 euros, which you could totally do, with change to spare.

Now if it were 150,000 euros, well then...

Stocklist | 1987 Aston Martin Shooting Break, at E. Thiesen Rare Automobiles [thiesen-kg.de thanks tamerlane]
Oct 2009: Driven: Lagonda Shooting Brake [classicandperformancecar.com]
Previously: Feb 2008: The Lagondawagon @ DT

Regular readers of Daddy Types, who know better than anyone just how fascinating and insightful I am, can appreciate it when I say that I am, without a doubt, the least interesting thing in Adweek's in-depth article about [not] marketing cooking toys to boys.

Boys 2-11 love watching cooking shows; they're taking cooking classes; they're cooking and pretending to cook. But cooking toys are still in the girls' section of the toy store, and they're all/mostly still only marketed to girls.

What I noticed, though, was that the toy companies don't like to get called out on their gender-based marketing strategies. The makers of the girliest cooking toys--including Hasbro, makers of the venerable Easy-Bake Oven and a new cake/cupcake thing called Girl Gourmet--either sidestepped the issue or declined to respond altogether. Awkward.

And then on what I thought was a completely unrelated article, the New York Times reports from some kitchen appliance expo where the big innovation is apparently one-button cooking: "Popcorn." "Steak." "Bread." Everything is becoming the 7-Eleven microwave. And all the toaster ovens have "pizza bumps" because all anyone eats now is frozen pizza.

What the hell, people? Do you see the connection? It's the Easy-Bake Oven. It was introduced in 1963. Entire generations since then have been brainwashed to be incapable of cooking with anything more complicated than a light bulb. Entire generations of girls, that is. It's now up to boys and their parents [i.e., dads] to rescue cooking before it's too late.

Toy Pitches Half-Baked [adweek.com]
Kitchen Gadgets Take The Fast-Food Mentality Into The Home [nyt]

The earliest appearance of the word--which probably didn't cross my mind ten times in the 1980s and 90s--was in February 1986. The last was September 2005.

Of the ten, four involve poor women, including two mentions of black girls with a boombox and a walkman, respectively, on their strollers. Another is a crystal meth addict who turns tricks all night while her kid stays strapped in the stroller in the hall. The fourth is mentioned as color for a Northern Irish street corner scene.

One mention is a vintage clothing piece, where the writer says she looks like her mom in some old photo, pushing her kid [the writer] in a stroller. The other one, I can't remember. Whatever.

But four mentions involve dads, which seemed notably high to me. Here they are, in order of depressingness and/or proximity to Nirvana:

Jon Caramanica's story on Houston Hip-Hoppers [Sep. 2005]
"One guy, lacking a crate or a chair, sinks deep into a creaky baby stroller. Its previous occupant, a young girl with pigtails, snoozes in his lap."

Chuck Eddy's review of Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow [Nov. 1997]

"A decade ago, I pushed my toddler son's stroller through Ann Arbor, Michigan, where marijuana was almost legal, and even adults dressed like college students. Suspicious of parental guidance, proto-Grunge Kinko's slackers dished out enough uncomprehending stares to turn me against college radio smugness forever and recognize the nuclear-familiar virtues of the suburban Top 40 I'd long since abandoned. A guy my age (mid-30s), Art Alexakis shares a two-story house outside Portland with his wife and preschool-age daughter, and sounds as if a decade ago, he should have been reciting plain old melodic Tom Petty/ John Mellencamp parables. But now it's the 90s, so he dresses Lollapaloozoid and adds Nirvana power chords, even though the first and last songs on 1995's Sparkle and Fade analyzed life in Mellencamp's "small town."

The painting from the cover of Incesticide leans against a wall, a giant telescope in front of it. On the floor, near a big cardboard box overflowing with papers, is a bound, black journal with a Polaroid of Frances glued to the front, sandy-haired and adorable. "The Bean," as Cobain sometimes calls her, has flown off with the nanny today to see her mother in England, where she's playing with Hole at the Phoenix Festival. There are reminders of both of them everywhere. Love's guitar, painted red with Victorian flowers; her 70's fake fur coat in the closet; Frances's playpen, her stroller, her dirty little baby socks all over the place.

Captain Claridge, a British officer in the IFOR (NATO's Implementation Force) press office, told me this was the first war where civilians were the primary target. She told me about a man walking his three-year-old son in a stroller and a sniper shot the child in the head, rather than the father. Why? Because there was more horror, more residual terror, in killing a child in front of his parent.

Toronto really IS New York, only cleaned up.

If you lived in New York in the 90s, and you had a bike, it would get stolen regularly, and so you'd have to go down to Alphabet City and "buy" it back from a sidewalk used bike seller. It was just the city's way of reminding you, $20-40 at a time, that you should keep your bike inside.

So then I read about Lindsay Taylor, Toronto's most famous stroller vigilante dad, who tracked down his jacked Phil & Teds double on Craigslist within a couple of hours, and then, armed with just with a camera and a Gandhi-esque wingman ["We're both very non-violent people,"] managed to retrieve it.

And it's not the use of craigslist, or the existence of an apparently well-organized stroller theft operation--hell, can you imagine explaining even the concept of stroller theft to someone parenting in the pre-Bugaboo era?--that blows my mind. It's that people in Toronto are apparently comfortable leaving their expensive strollers on the street, unattended, for hours at a time. That's not New York, people, that's Copenhagen.

Father retrieves stolen stroller in Craigslist sting [thestar.com via dt reader, advertiser, monte design impresario, and Canadian, Ralph]

Wait, 1978? Didn't we just come through the craftiest era since the invention of macrame? Why has no one knitted an awesome landscape play blanket for a kid born in the 21st century? Which would mean updating it, by knitting, say, a mall parking lot, or a soccer field, or an urban street/park/vacant lot setup, instead of a Shropshire farm or whatever.

I'm guessing that since the first generation of cap-knitting snowboarders are now becoming dads, this noble task falls to you. Also, if you asked grandma to do it, she would laugh in your face.

Pictures big enough to count the stitches: Knitted Landscapes [wary meyers]

In case Tina's crowdsourced Swiss Miss list didn't help you, Jason Kottke has made his and Meg's unused baby name list available.

It's solid, but pretty boy-heavy. Does this mean uberbloggers are still hoarding their lists of girls' names? Or am I just not surfing the right neighborhoods?

Baby Names for Sale, Never Used [kottke.org]
previously: 10000 crowdsourced 4-letter boys' names

No idea why I thought of this right now:

Adults who become parents are usually challenged by their new role, with its responsibilities and anxieties. New parents also face previously unexplored values and attitudes that surface suddenly upon the birth of their baby, as well as new routines and new problems that need an immediate answer. Such challenges often elicit a heightened emotional response, so that mundane matters suddenly make for excessive worry.
- Barry Zuckerman, MD, Pamela M. Zuckerman, MD, Daniel J. Siegel, MD, Contemporary Pediatrics, Apr 2005

But:

As a mother who walks regularly, Brooklynite Micaela Birmingham discovered a design problem when going out with her child. "When my first daughter was a newborn, I proudly stepped out with my fancy stroller for our first walk to the park and was devastated that the sun was in my precious darling's eyes," she said.

Motherhood really is a miracle and a mystery that those of us who don't experience it firsthand can only appreciate incompletely.

CityMum CityShades are $70 [citymum.com via coolhunting, thanks dt reader nelson]

You know how Frank Lloyd Wright said he became an architect because his mother gave him Froebel blocks to play with as a child? Well, guess what, everybody played with blocks as a child Frank, what else ya got?

Wait, that's not the point. The point is, you--one of you--now has the chance to blow the doors off Mrs. Wright's toys-as-career-destiny jalopy, and you have less than 30 hours to do it.

A limited edition [#37/300!], Lucite model of Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard Street--the tower of super-luxe, glass-box residences that would've changed Tribeca, if only the New York condo market hadn't imploded--is on eBay right. now.

It comes in the mint-condition, original box. It includes a little Anish Kapoor sculpture for the entryway. There's a pair of white gloves, because the whole damn thing comes apart into 58 pieces to facilitate inspiring/megalomaniacal play.

Whether it turns him into a hedge fund manager, an over-leveraged real estate developer, or Swiss starchitect with a flair for the flamboyantly austere, this set of $5000/sf Jenga blocks will shape your kid's future. And you can take that to the bank.

56 Leonard St. Building Model (Herzog & de Meuron), currently $605 +30 s/h, auction ends Mar. 17 [ebay via curbed]
UPDATE: and SOLD! for $1,136.11. Nicely done, starchitect$(*%ers!

Since I only obsessively tracked down the info, dates, and materials for all the editions of Enzo Mari's iconic 16 Animali puzzle, I don't know which edition of Mari's sequel puzzle, 16 Pesci, has been obsessively photographed, up close, piece by piece, on Mondo Blogo.

But we know it's marbled resin, with a Danese stamp, and a 1974 copyright, and that it looks pretty awesome. Also, I hope Mr. Mari will not take it is a sign of "a didactic ruling or guidance which is, as such, always of a repressive nature," but the kid would like to point out that whales, snakes, octopus, seals and dolphins are not fish.

Enough with the art already... [mondo-blogo]

I'll admit it, when it comes to writing about some seemingly basic new parent topics, I feel a bit burned out sometimes. It gives me a new-found appreciation for the folks who write parenting magazines and have to come up with slightly new ways to write the same exact stories month after month, year after year.

On the bright side, sticking to it for a while does make it possible to put things in some perspective. To be able to compare, to identify some longer-term historical shifts.

And so I can say, for example, when I post about yet another pair of classic, Textiles & Objects-era Marilyn Neuhart stuffed dolls coming up for auction at Wright 20 next week, I can see that the estimates [$500-700] for these vintage dolls are down 50-70% from a couple of years ago.

Lot 437, March 23, 2010: Marilyn Neuhart doll, c. 1961, est. $500-700 [wright20.com]
Lot 439: Marilyn Neuhart lion, c. 1961, est. $500-700 [wright20.com]

After being chased out of all the bars in Brooklyn by an angry, drunken, kid-free mob, Dadwagons' Matt Gross and his daughter head to the mean, steep, junkie-filled streets of San Francisco.

Which they love! And food's so cheap! And he expenses the whole thing!

The Frugal Traveler in San Francisco With His Year-Old Daugther [nytimes]
The leftovers are just as good! on the Traveling Dad Diet [dadwagon]
related? You gonna finish that?

I'm not reading it, and I've really got nothing to add on the topic, except to say that I will be totally unsurprised if Rielle Hunter hasn't timed her GQ article to the launch of her momblog.

Otherwise, the look on that doll's face pretty much captures the essence of the accompanying photoshoot for me. Yeow.

Hello, America. My Name Is Rielle Hunter [gq.com, image via wash post]

After a sleepover at Grandma's and a breakfast of [apparently] nothing but raspberries? Who do you think had her Exorcist powerpuking moment all over Grandma's white upholstered living room? It was truly spectacular.

Unfortunately for the kid, it was followed by six hours of agonizing, exhausting dry heaves. She's doing great today, though. Watching Macaulay Culkin in The Nutcracker and feelin' fine.

The list of "baffling things that happened in the 1980s which I was completely unaware of at the time" has grown by one: Andy Warhol was commissioned by Roger Schlaifer to make portraits of Cabbage Patch dolls in 1985.

Schlaifer, an Atlanta licensing executive, acquired the rights to the dolls, changed their name to Cabbage Patch Kids, and wrote the whole adoption backstory with his wife Suzanne Nance in 1982. They were one of the biggest "must-have Christmas toy" frenzies of our generation.

Schlaifer sold the rights back to the doll's inventors around 1987-8, who turned them over to Hasbro. Which was right around the time, ten months after Warhol's death, that the Schlaifers' firm, Schlaifer Nance & Co. signed an exclusive licensing deal with the artist's estate. The deal quickly devolved into a tangle of litigation, though, when SNC discovered Warhol's estate did not control the copyright to many of the artist's images. [Actually, lawyers for the estate and the licensor found that, because they didn't follow the copyright policies of the time, many of Warhol's works are in the public domain. This bears some serious looking-into.]

images:
Cabbage Patch Kid silkscreen, 1985, at Jonathan O'Hara Gallery [artnet.com]
Mitterand-Cramer has a pencil sketch of a Cabbage Patch Kid [mitterand-cramer.com]
DECEMBER 1987: FIRST LICENSING DEAL WITH THE WARHOL FOUNDATION IS ANNOUNCED. [warholstars.org]

Barely made it in the door yesterday, now I'm a quivering, aching blob of pain.

And just when I think I couldn't possibly feel worse, here is a headline from the Daily Telegraph Korean couple let baby starve to death while caring for virtual child [telegraph.co.uk via slate]

Unless you've been wearing your white, pointy hood backwards, there's no new news to see here. I just wanted to write that headline.

Minority births on track to outnumber white births [washingtonpost.com]

"Let's be frank - your seal of approval was on many of the recalled cribs in recent years."

Wow, have you read the speech CPSC Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum made Wednesday at the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association "Washington Summit"? It's nothing short of amazing. In the six years I've been studying why and how we end up with the baby products we get, I've been a close observer--and an increasingly cynical critic--of the JPMA and the CPSC. And I can't think of anything comparable to this speech.

The single biggest impression is that the CPSC is going to move aggressively, in ways that we haven't seen for a generation at least, to set and enforce safety standards for kids products. They're crafting new crib safety standards right now. They're looking at hammocks and slings [heads up, Brooklyn!].

She urgedmanufacturers to address safety at the design and production stage, but also to build to exceed, not just meet published standards. And she said manufacturers have "one chance" to improve the standards required under the 2008 CPSIA law, and then the CPSC will do it themselves.

From the get-go, Tenenbaum was clear what the CPSC's top priority is for 2010: cribs.

For all of the attention that toys with lead paint and dangerous magnets received in 2007 during the year of the recall, we must not forget another major recall that happened back then. Simplicity cribs.

The Simplicity drop side crib recall of September 2007 was a game-changer.

Over 1 million cribs were recalled. At that time CPSC was aware of 3 deaths and 7 entrapments in those cribs. Since 2007, we've recalled another million Simplicity drop side cribs.

And sadly, we are now aware of 11 children that have died due to drop side defects and other hardware defects in Simplicity cribs. The 2007 Simplicity recall made national news for days and it was the start of a drumbeat of drop-side crib recalls.

A drum-beat that we must bring to a close.

All told, Tenenbaum made it clear that there is a new sheriff in town. Let's see how that goes.

Chairman Tenenbaum, JPMA Summit Keynote Address, March 9, 2010 - Washington, DC [cpsc.gov]

The NY Times has breathless, slightly dangerous account of traveling into the exotic, unwaxed, third world-y wilds of babywearing. Well, technically, they just visited some basecamps on Park Avenue and 7th Avenue, Brooklyn to meet some intrepid adventuresses.

And considering a tremendous kicker, you'd think they might have actually, you know, talked to a dad with a sling. But no.

Baby carrier-using dads are a shy, skittish species, who can only be observed from a distance as they venture out in their natural habitats: Manhattan streets, and Brooklyn parks and watering holes.

Waitaminnit, didn't I just read that all the watering holes were filled with strollers?

Original headline: Baby Snuggled In A Sling, but Safe?The Latest In Strollers? Mom and Dad [nytimes]

Something something something eat an apple, kid something something healthy, something something strong something something crush American babies' heads something something.

If you can come up with a better translation for this piece of c. 1967 Commie Red Fruit propaganda, I'm game.

Russian Children's Health Poster, est. $60-75, March 13 Malachite [online] Auction [liveauctioneers.com]

See, Mercedes? This is how we like our auto show ruminations about slick, compact Eurowagons coming to the US: delivered to my inbox as a date-filled press release.

Acura announced Monday they will unveil the TSX Sports Wagon at the New York Auto Show at the end of the month, and that it will be in dealers this fall. The TSX Sports Wagon, of course, is basically the awesome European-spec Accord Tourer wagon, which was captured above during a last minute testing on the Merritt Parkway. [...]

Drivetrain and engine options have yet to be announced, but I'm sure it will be highly appropriate.

Photo above from: 2011 Acura TSX Sport Wagon bound for New York Auto Show [autoblog]

It might look like I'm slow to finally link to Matt Haughey's recommended screenful of iPhone games for kids.

But really, I was just waiting to see how long it would take his commenters to mention Pee Monkey, the best app for toilet training future Pikes or boys at sea.

Us, we get by on a mic-less, camera-less iPod Touch, which we try not to use in restaurants. Usually, it comes out at the restless end of a long drive--or a long flight. The kid is pretty good with Brushes, and she likes Labyrinth 3D, too.

But mostly we use it to watch a small collection of ripped YouTube videos [I download them using a Greasemonkey script installed in Firefox]:

• vintage Sesame Street


• Schoolhouse Rock


• Pantsu Pankuro, the toilet training cartoons from NHK


• Pitagora Suicchi's Rube Goldberg credit sequences


• Carl Sagan

My Recommended Kid Games [a.wholelottanothing.org]

I'm not really sure what to do with this 1967 photo of a 7-ft tall robot from Kaliningrad named Electron (электрон), except to put it next to the other photos of wacked out, homemade, backwoods, Communist robots with strollers.

1967 - Neptune (Нептун), Elektron (электрон) - Vasilenko (Russian) [cyberneticzoo.com via gizmodo, thanks dt reader rolf]

Woo-hoo! Finally! America is getting the Mercedes B-Class, the sporty, luxury car designed specifically for young, urban families!

Oh, but not this one, the next-gen B-Class, slated for 2011. And even then, not really. Here's how Autoblog really nails it down:

..we've been hearing rumblings for quite some time that one of these models might make its way Stateside before too long. Those rumors continue today with this report from Automotive News, which suggests that a compact car and a small SUV may soon be in the offing in the U.S.

[Sales & Marketing head Joachim Schimidt] said "a very stylish sedan" to be sold in Europe as part of the new four-vehicle B-class family also is being considered for the United States.

The U.S. launch schedule has not been determined because of uncertainty about the euro-dollar exchange rate. But Schmidt said the United States appears to be ready for a premium small car. A key to the B class' success in the United States will be offering an alternative-powertrain version, such as a plug-in electric or fuel cell, he said.

These are the same, lame contingencies Mercedes has been using since MBUSA dumped the original B-Class from its lineup in 2005. In fact, the "oh, maybe we'll get a US-specific redesign 2-3 years from now" line was trotted out [doing the math] 2-3 years ago [!] in 2007.

As the wild success of the Smart demonstrates, MBUSA would rather dick around for 10 years, then finally relent, and release an obsolete, mediocre oddity rather than let a real city car intrude on their suburban mall-trawling lineup.

Me, I've given up. Instead, I've started scouting for a low-km 1997 A-Class I can import myself when the DOT/EPA exemption kicks in in 2022.

Uh, no: Report: Mercedes to launch B-Class-based hatchback, CUV in U.S. [autoblog via dt reader george ]
Mercedes plans U.S. small car, SUV [autonews.com]
Previously: BCB: It's short for B-Class BS

Abby Ca-freakin-dabby, Zoey, Elmo, Big Bird? Three of these things belong together--in a dump.

I thought the whole point of Sesame Workshop licensing their IP to American Apparel was to put hipsterish old school characters and artwork into the mix. There are a couple of classic designs, but the best babies get is a late-model Grover.

I say, Roosevelt Franklin? Roosevelt Franklin? Roosevelt Franklin, where are you?

Sesame Street printed American Apparel for babies, kids, and grups [american apparel]

Yale Joel was clearly LIFE Magazine's go-to guy for photographing artists in the 1960s. Google's archive of LIFE photos has several dozen outtakes from a 1960 photo series called Off Beat Artist, which featured Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Jim Dine. And Dine's young son. In 1959-60, Dine was becoming known around New York for his Happenings; his emergence as an early Pop Art figure was still a couple of years off.

One of those Happenings apparently involved running small children through an obstacle course of brooms, ladders, and paint cans.

Off Beat Artists: Jim Dine and baby in his studio, June 1960, photographed for LIFE by Yale Joel [LIFE/Google]