Who spends money where?

Hat tip to Good Magazine
Shout out to Jeffluence

Maybe that wasn’t the best name after all…

Weird weekend.

Originally uploaded by aknacer

In summary, NY is summery today, and yes, it is early February. I’m sure I will go back to shivering in my boots within mere hours but in the meanwhile the whole world has seemed to go topsy-turvy.

First of all there is the continued saga of Peanut Corp of America. This story reminds me of the Somali Pirates in that I just can’t take the whole thing very seriously. It seems like either A) a comic book where the baddies break into Peanut Corp. to do dastardly deeds, or, B) a company founded on an SAT question wherein Peanut Corp makes 8,000,000 jars of peanut butter and 1/3 of them are chunky so how many of them have salmonella? (BTW, is PBOA’s logo for real? If they didn’t already have problems…)

Secondly, I walked past a woman and her dog today. When the dog sneezed the woman said ‘God bless you.’ It felt like I got sucked into an Evangelical Buddhism whirlpool.

Speaking of whirlpools, Michael ‘Gold-Medal’ Phelps has earned his place in history as one of the most driven pot smokers alive, and then, strangely, the first companies to stop their sponsorship deals are Subway and Kellogg’s.

And lastly, this is the weekend of the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, FL where grown ups run around in Pirate costumes and ask strangers if they do ARRROBICS. Somali pirates, RPGs and common sense are unwelcome.

This is no time to point fingers…

Unless of course you are going to do a brief history of “finger pointing” posters through the ages and around the world. See them all here courtesy of the Russian design studio of awesomeness, Art. Lebedev.

We are…an American b(r)and (sing along)

Can First Daughters Sasha and Malia Give J. Crew a Lift?(TIME)
Originally uploaded by MashGet

Watching the first family it is clear that we have the start of a new American brand. We also have a family of endorsers who are able to give credence to other “American” brands and in doing so dictate the future of what that means to us all.

Michelle Obama has inspired a number of blogs that follow the designers that she selects and the way that she is bringing style back into the White House. By selecting up and coming designers as well as a couple of key selections of White+Black and J.Crew she is helping to democratize style in much the same way that Target did for much of the last ten years.

Radiance and Rosebud (the secret service names for Malia and Sasha) may well fan the flame of J.Crew’s stateside comeback under the helm of Mickey Drexler. Of course, if I was over at Gap Inc. or Ralph Lauren I would be screaming and shouting as they seem to have lost some of the American luster that was key to the success of both brands.

I do have some reservations about the choice of Pottery Barn for the First Residence, but…you can’t win them all and I suppose I would rather live in a Pottery Barn America than a Lazy Boy America. Thinking about it, it’s probably a better message to send although a little DWR around the edges wouldn’t hurt.