Bald is Beauitful…And Profitable
Have you ever wanted to emblazon a corporate trademark on your body? You do? Well, here is your chance!
Air New Zealand is looking for thirty adults to become cranial billboards to tell people all about life-changing journeys to New Zealand. The first criteria is that you have to be an adult. Otherwise, you will really have something to talk to your parents about later. Secondly, you have to be willing to shave your head and tattoo a little ditty about www.airnewzealand.com on the back of it. You won’t get to make up your own, of course. On the contrary you will have to choose whatever the marketing department decides is best.
I am not sure what the other criteria will be as far as it coming down to the shape of the head, the attractiveness of the person, or if they will choose the oddest looking ones.
New Zealand has beautiful rolling hills, sheeps, goats, kiwis, maybe a unicorn, and, of course, lots of Hobbits.
Who would we like to see walking around Los Angeles? William Shatner. We all know he wears a hair piece. Why doesn’t he just admit it? He admits it because we know, but he has never appeared bald in any publication, film, or appearance that we know about. I guess he is not a method actor.
Joe Famolare and the Platform Shoe – Part II
Joe Famolare and the Platform ShoePart II.
The Capezio and Bandolino Years
Capezio was founded in 1887 by Salvatore Capezio and still exists today as a tristed source and household name for dance shoes, later on fashion shoes, and now competitive ice skates. During Joe’s tenure he designed shoes for the Bolshoi Ballet and many others. Other highlights were designing shoes for the legendary Twyla Tharp’s Dance company.
His designs and selections also most notably appeared in the original Broadway Production of West Side story. The “Dance Oxford” created by Joe especially for West Side Story is still in use on the stage to this very day.
In my opinion, heading for the theater not only gave him an understanding of what was required in active shoes but gave him a lot of inspiration on how to be savvy, unconventional marketer and promoter of his product. One instance later found him skating on a float in a Thanksgiving Day parade to promote his shoes!
He left Capezio in 1965 over irreconcilable differences. Capezio was heading more and more into putting fashion before function, and wanting to break into the fashion market more while eliminating some comfort features in shoes, and Joe wanted to concentrate a little more on function.
His next stop along the way, was in 1965, as an executive for Marx and Newman. He was in charge of their popular division, Bandolino shoes that were sold at Neiman Marcus and elsewhere . He not only was executive vice president but designed while he was there. I am not sure exactly which models he designed, but they all were at least selected by Joe even if he didn’t design every single model during his tenure there. The company started to take a turn when Mr. Newman left the business, and as the company got more political, Joe decided that it was time to leave.
In 1969, Joe formed Famolare shoes…and the rest, as they say, is history.
Tomorrow: Part Three…Joe “Gets There”.
Better Check the Photo
In the olden days, whenever those were, some people met the traditional face to face way. Some folks met their mate as a wartime penpal. In fact, I know a few older couples who have met that way. Today, the internet is inundated with dating and matching sites. It reminds me of a singles ad an old friend of mine placed years ago. In fact, she placed two of them. One said she was fun and crazy looking for a good time. The other said she was a woman who was very into her ethnic heritege and was quite scholarly. Did you know that all the same guys called both of the ads and presented themselves differently each time? It wasn’t a coincidence that the man just had a similar voice, nor did they disguise it the same time around. It was really just all the same guys. Unbelievable.
Sites like True.com can be kind of humorous. If you are the single type, unlike me, you can search for free and have a few laughs. Why do people put up so many pictures of them pouting?
Nevertheless, if you are serious, always meet someone in a public place. Also, you may want to ask to carry a certain color of umbrella as they might have used a photo from thirty years ago and you wouldn’t recognize them otherwise.
Beach Cruisin
The days may be getting shorter and you may be thinking about pulling your woolens out of storage. As for me, my sense of season is sometimes very askew. Since I moved closer to the beach, I tend to not quite think about even purchasing an overcoat until January. People are on their beach cruiser bikes through December. Actually, only people who are from out of town are on them in January.
There is that one week in January where the temperature dips to 30 for those two nights, I get out all my winter hats and overcoats and boots out. People think I am nuts, as it is only like that after 9:00 P.M. for a couple nights. The ones I think are strange are folks who come down here from the great white winter in the north. When its 50 degrees Fahrenheit out, they have spring fever and are running around in shorts.
On the other hand, when I go up there, people give me odd looks for being in a parka in October. They say that your blood thins when you live in the south because it is so warm. I don’t know what that really means, but all I know is that I have lost my ability to tolerate a real old fashioned Upper Peninsula/Minnesota/Upstate New York winter
Uncategorized | Comment (0)Joe Famolare and the History of Famolare Shoes Part I: The Beginning
On August 16, 2005, “Joe Famolare and the History of Famolare Shoes” was presented in workshop format as a part of The Vintage Fashion Guild’s “Fashionable Summer” designer workshop series on week #7 . The presenter was the author of this blog. The following article is a synopsis of presented information. Text (c) VintageGent, and The Vintage Fashion Guild. and the additional photos are copyright their respective sources (advertisements, press photos) or contributors (shoe photos). Use without permission prohibited, but may be obtained under certain circumstances and permitted in writing.
Joe Famolare and the History of Famolare ShoesPart I: The Beginning.
Joe Famolare grew up in a third generation shoe making family. He was born in Boston and grew up in Chestnut Hill, which is a neighborhood/area on Boston’s south side. His father, Joe Sr. owned Famolare Shoe Engineering, which was opened in 1934. The company made cutting patterns for the shoe industry. Joe Jr started working at the family business at the tender age of 12. Very cognizant of the child labor laws, Joe Sr. required him to pay income tax and file at that age. When he became the age of majority, he had already designed shoes and was a young executive at the family business.
Despite this early sucess he deviated from the family business and started singing in nightclubs for tips! According to Joe himself: ” I hated the shoe business. It was so dusty and boring, and the people didn’t seem happy. I could sing, and I studied voice seriously, and I found that people liked to hear me sing. So I went to Emerson to be an actor.”
For the next several years, he attended Emerson college in Boston and pursued a degree in the musical theater. Midway through, his dreams were put on hold. He was drafted by the US Army. Joe served at the very tail end of the Korean war as a radio operator, broadcasting having been a minor in college studies.
After he left the millitary, at age 23, he soon decided that a singing career was not for him. Despite his disenchantment with the shoe business, he learned that long, highly irregular hours of a musical career and the irregular and meager pay brought forth by relying on tips was not for him.
Joe Sr. demanded that he could not just wander around “finding himself, that Joe Jr. needed to get a job. So, Joe was again hurdled into the shoe business and took night courses to finish a degree.
His decided deviation from his roots was short lived indeed. He melded his two interests leaving the family business being hired at Capezio, reknowned in the dance shoe business… in 1960.
Tune in for Part II…
1960s, 1970s, famolare shoes | Comment (0)Backyard Baseball
Sports competitions, and casually knocking around in the backyard with a ball have been the subject of film from the time the very first reel of was placed in a camera. Looking at old films gives us a real glimpse into how people lived. We get a look into how they dressed everyday, as in golden age Hollywood movies, actors were dressed to promote designer clothing to the people eating popcorn. Luckily, a lot of old sports clips were converted into sports videos and dvds so they are more stable and better preserved.
I was looking around on the SportsVids site and came across this casual gem from the 1920s. They always say people dressed more formally in decades past, which is true, but I have a feeling that this game just spontaneously broke out in front of someone’s house:
I hope more people will go to SportsVid, an online sports videos site, and share the gems that have been languishing. Maybe they had their camera ready at a historic match up of famous athletes, or perhaps someone somewhere has footage of a lost sport that we just don’t play very often today. You may just have an important piece of the past for someone to jog a memory or to research a time past.
Spring 2009: Rose Gold is In
The trend in watches for spring is rose gold. Style.com shows off the latest styles that will be sold for the spring 2009 season. You’ll be sure to see versions cropping up at many different pricepoints.
Gold is naturally yellow. White gold is an alloy of yellow gold and silver to create the olor. Rose gold is created when the silver content is diminished, and copper is added. The higher the copper content, the redder the gold. Sometimes, the color may get deeper over time if the copper content is high enough.
If you wish to purchase a vintage Rose Gold watch, they are not nearly as easy to come by as if you were looking for yellow or white gold, but indeed they are out there. With spring a bit in the future, they have not completely “come out of the closets” yet and those looking for rose now may either have no competition because their friends are thinking about fall still, or the price may go high with limited inventory. It is truly hard to predict what you would pay, as not all watches are created equal as far as condition, age, karat, and overall initial quality.
So far, I have seen the rose watches coming from the 1930s and 1940s being offered up for sale. This is perhaps because good watches of that era are always seen as desirous. Look for later watches being dusted off and sold depending upon the popularity. It is sometimes difficult to determine hue online, as some cameras do not pick up the subtle nuances of color. Buy from a reputable online merchant or look at shops in person.
1930s, 1940s, modern fashion | Comment (0)New Ideas for Your Mattress Money?
Lately, there has been a lot of uncertainty about the economy. Many folks think “this to shall pass” and are well served by keeping their investments in tact. In fact, they look it as an opportune time to buy. On the other hand, there are people panicking and wondering if they should just put cash under their mattress and that will be the extent of their retirement income investing. They won’t gain anything, unless a coin they put under there should become a valuable collectible someday, but they won’t lose anything. They may not have as many nightmares at night, but they certainly will have sore backs.
Before you listen to all of the commercials, and send your gold jewelry in to be melted down, the other alternative that is being publicized is real estate trust deed investments that Diamond Bay LLC is offering.
Of course, land and real estate is a more stable investment in the long term than stocks, but before investing in anything new do thorough research. My great-grandmother didn’t thoroughly research her investment strategy of putting tolled coins in the floor board of the second story of her house. One day, the ceiling in the living room started to bow. Grandpa couldn’t get away with saying that Aunt Doris was merely a bit more rotund than usually and was just walking over that part of the floor. It was definitely a structural issue.
Uncategorized | Comment (1)The World’s Most Famous Watch
The most famous watch in the world was donated to the Smithsonian in 1998 by Don Hewitt.
It is a Minerva stopwatch previously owned by a Mr. Arthur Bloom. Mr. Bloom was a television director and one of the founder’s of the perennial news magazine “60 minutes.” He lent it to the production crew and on Oct. 22, 1968, the familar tick of Bloom’s stopwatch greeted America for the first time. The watch is an icon, and has been dramatized and parodied hundreds of times over.
Artie Bloom passed away but the Minverva…now computer generated (as the article informs)…ticks on…
reprinted from http://www.cbsnews.com
‘60 Minutes’ Founder Arthur Bloom Dies
NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 2006
Arthur Bloom (CBS)
Arthur Bloom (CBS)
(CBS)Arthur Bloom, the award-winning CBS News television director responsible for the distinctive on-screen look of >60 Minutes since its debut 37 years ago and who led the modernization of on-screen graphics at CBS News, died at home Saturday of cancer. He was 63 and resided in Grandview-on-Hudson, N.Y.
He was one of the last remaining original 60 Minutes founders still working for the program. Bloom also played a role in helping to train Dan Rather to succeed Walter Cronkite in the CBS News anchor chair in 1981.
Bloom spent his entire 45-year career at CBS and used his keen eye and a symphonic vision of camera work to become one of the medium’s best directors of live political event coverage. His outstanding talent was recognized with the first Lifetime Achievement Award in News Direction from the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1995. The same organization had honored him twice before, once for news direction of CBS News coverage of the 1976 Democratic and Republican conventions and, before that, in 1973 for his work on 60 Minutes.
Most of Bloom’s time was devoted to 60 Minutes; he helped to create and then honed the consistent, classy look of the broadcast. Each week he worked in Studio 33 in the CBS Broadcast Center monitoring the program’s studio production and directing the 60 Minutes correspondents as they taped introductions and tags for their reports. He influenced some of the broadcast’s most basic elements, starting with its famous ticking stopwatch.
The first stopwatch was Bloom’s own. The timepiece symbol began as part of 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt’s idea for “60 minutes of reality” and came to life when Bloom filmed his own Minerva stopwatch. The concept worked well enough to be used at the beginning of the broadcast’s third edition on Oct. 22, 1968.
Soon it was shown between segments, eventually becoming the iconic logo recognized by generations. Bloom updated the logo, but only in barely noticeable ways at intervals of several years. His modernizing touches included the use of slimmer typography and the addition of subtle shading and texture to the logo’s background. He oversaw the stopwatch’s transition from a filmed image to a computer-generated one.
“Artie had an eye for what worked visually and what didn’t – he was invaluable to me,” said Hewitt. “I depended on him to make the broadcast as visually appealing as it turned out to be. He was at my side every step of the way.”
Bloom also helped Hewitt execute the graphic concept for 60 Minutes as a magazine for television, deciding on a mock-up of a magazine page to put behind the correspondent to begin each of the broadcast’s segments. Now also computer-generated, the magazine concept has essentially remained the same.
entertainment, fashion history, history | Comment (0)Rehab Like a Rock Star
I may snipe at the stars of today from time to time because they always to be giving the whole world a contagious case of TMI (Too Much Information.) I have to admit that the constant stream of celebrities falling and dusting themselves off again gives a face to a variety of illnesses. Tranquil, residential rehab facilities like they show on tv have destimagized the act of removing oneself from the day to day and seeking help. I was surprised that places like Promises don’t just deal with substance abuse but also anxiety. So, if you have sought help because you have followed the stories of your favorite actors, and felt a little less alone or too proud, I apologize for all of my snickering.
1-2-3 Draw!
In August, to celebrate the Tour du France, there was a one hour design competition. It is exactly as it sounds. Designers only had one hour to conceptulize a brand new running shoe. Sometimes, one would argue that the best work someone does involves going back to the inspiration after hours of going around and around.
The most unusual entry was from Barloworld. It featured a set of retractable spikes a la Wolverine that only appeared when you were shoving off. How would this be executed? I am not entirely sure. Since this is a “concept shoe” it will probably never be actually produced, but I could imagine that if created it would be best left in the hands of the pros!
The rest of the entries can be found HERE.
modern fashion | Comment (0)Cheap Specs
In the past, I always only considered having one pair of glasses at a time for daily use. I would agonize to make the right decision. Maybe it was because I considered them more of a medical device for myself, rather than the fashion accessory that I viewed the glasses of others as.
They have just introduced many new styles of eyeglasses at Zenni Optical. I have sung the praises of them in the past for several reasons. Firstly, there are some retro inspired styles that you can wear every day. Leave your authentic museum quality 50s horn rims at home for just walking around town. Secondly, the prices are so good that you can afford to buy more than one.
Mark up on eyeglass frames can be rediculous. Zenni keeps their prices down by relying on word of mouth, with frames as low as $8.99. It helps, of course, that they also are the manufacturer. You aren’t paying for a splashy commercial or a middleman. The Clark Howard Show bought all of their folks glasses and there has been a lot of promo mileage out of that.
Speaking of commercials, there was an eyeglass commercial that haunts me to this very day. I won’t mention the optometrist, but the president of the company used to dance around in them. We’ll just call him Richard. I am glad that the head of Zenni hasn’t put on the dancing shoes.
Lost in Manhatten
I met a few friends at a restaurant a few nights ago. They were visiting from out of town, and I had not seen them in at least two years, so there was plenty of reminiscing to be had. One particular story came up about a very ill conceived road trip.
When you live in Boston, as I did back then, and someone is visiting from the west coast, they perceive New York city to be very close and worth a day trip. In the grand scheme of things, distance is all relative. New York City is a lot closer to Boston in the minds of out of towners than it is to Bostonians. Heck, if we lived on the north shore or the south shore, we couldn’t even conceive the idea of driving through the city to see what the world was like on the opposite side of it.
This particular trip, our friends had mentioned that they had an old buddy in Manhatten. He always said that if they were in the neighborhood to stop by. He had a collection of vintage fedoras that he had gradually been dispersing because he just couldn’t move them all any more.
I agreed to drive to Manhatten. All four hours or so. We get into town, and I ask my friends if they had gotten their pal on the cell phone. Dan had sort of a perplexed look on his face. “Oh, I don’t have his number. He’s an attorney, though. We can stop and look up his office in the Yellow Page.” Dan conveniently forgot that it was Sunday today, and it was highly likely that the office would be closed. Furthermore, this friend, that I was beginning to think was imaginary, didn’t exactly have a private practice. He worked for the FBI, so his residence was also unlisted.
Mandy, Dan’s wife, chimed in: “Are you kidding me?? You plan to drive around Manhatten hoping you will run into somebody??” Surprisingly enough, Mandy is still married to Dan to this very day. We also did not think of bringing my laptop, so the idea of checking email to hope that the mystery friend was kicking back on the computer. Even an online travel guide would have worked out at that point, so we could have actually done something or could have gotten tips on leaving the rental car and being flown home!
Next time I go to New York, I am really going to go to New York. I am going to take a New York tour so I can see a few real sights. We ended up grabbing a slice of pizza at a walk up window, watched a guy try to get his car out of one of those double decker parking lots, and then had to go home. I neglected to mention that Dan and Mandy were leaving the next morning bright and early and they were getting on a plane. They had Knotts berry farm tickets in their hot little hands. They wanted to go to some of the amusement parks they remembered going to on the east coast as kids before heading back to Oregon. As you can imagine, we had to barrel down the highway high on caffeine to make it back in time.
As you can imagine, I will go wherever Mandy wants to go, but I am not going to trust Dan without a full investigation.
By the way, speaking of driving around the country aimlessly, I was reading if you sign up for the Trusted Tours newsletter, Dan’s profile is in it every month as a poster child to show what happens when you don’t plan ahead in a strange town. Of course, I am only kidding. What you really get is a chance to purchase discounted tickets, as well as be in a drawing for an awesome travel related giveaway. This time around it is a $150 Magellan’s Gift Certificate. I can think of a few people who need one of those!
A Farewell to One of Cinema’s Coolest
A belated farewell to one of cinema’s finest.
Paul Newman was known for his “cool” style, but never fit the Hollywood mold. He chose roles based on his personal interests and the challenge he thought the role would provide, rather than the paycheck. One may argue that he wasn’t a pauper, but I think it is more of a case of “Do What you Love; the money will come.”
Secondly, he and Joanne Woodward married in 1958, and were only seperated by Newman’s recent death. They met while starring in a stage production together, which is not uncommon for actors. What was uncommon was that the chose to keep their home life private and their children out of the spotlight so that their family life could be relatively normal.
(A little trivia footnote: Paper Moon was to originally star Paul Newman and daughter, who was known on screen as Nell Potts. We know her today as Nell Newman of Newman’s Own. The director changed, and Paul Newman withdrew his daughter when the direction of the film changed. Ryan and Tatum O’Neal replaced them.)
Maybe modern Hollywood should take cues from them. “Too Much Information” doesn’t a long marriage make.
entertainment, film | Comment (1)
