Have a Ball This Christmas (or next, it's pretty late)

SPOT THE DOG and SILVERFACE THE CAT
“English Bone China with a Japanese twist,” is how these baubles by Reiko Kaneko are described by UK online retailer Rockett St. George.




PLAY MORE
Note pads by Amsterdam-based Trapped in Suburbia.




ORBS
You’ll find both 'functional' and 'decorative' items for sale at the Paul and Kate Studio on Etsy. These orbs are from the 'decorative' (completely useless) category. But who cares--they are so textural and mysterious, and absolutely perfect for someone who really doesn’t “need” anything. You might want to combine the Prehistoric Planet (top) with a copy of "The Little Prince." And you can safely assume that the recipient of the Caramel Barnacle (not really an orb, its flat bottom makes it more like a scone), doesn’t already have one.



FILAGREE BALL
This vintage pendant, from TopsyDesign on Etsy, is so Rosemary's Baby. If you're giving this to a pregnant woman, don’t forget to fill with tannis root!

FIFA World Cup: Viewers Runneth Over

I don’t care how little interest you have in football, there’s no escaping the annual hype of the Super Bowl in the U.S. This year’s game made history by becoming the most watched TV broadcast ever, with 106.5 million people tuning in. Compared to viewership of the World Cup Final, however, the Super Bowl is hardly super-sized. The final soccer match of the World Cup gets almost seven times as many viewers.

Truth is, we in the U.S., just don’t feel the FIFA fever. There are pockets of excitement here and there-- this Barney’s ad for $24 team flip flops, and chocolate soccer balls at Dean & Deluca. Not very impressive given that we consume more food on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year except Thanksgiving.

And the final match is only a small part of the entire FIFA World Cup Finals ...


Expected viewership for the month-long event of 64 games, is to be somewhere around 26 billion. That’s a lot of eyeballs.




Sources: FIFA, Nielsen

Old Goooooooooooooooooal!*

Before everyone gets caught up in this year’s World Cup, I wanted to share these vintage soccer-team photos I bought at the flea market in Buenos Aires.

Something about the strange purplish background and the thickly inked emerald jerseys, made me stop and pick up the clipped-out magazine pageof F.C. Oeste , above. Perfect souvenir, I thought, from a land of devout Soccerites (Maradona, of course, is God). Before I knew it, the dealer--yes, vintage ephemera can be very addictive-- had brought out a 6”-thick stack of El Graphico team pictures for me to look at.

Since I do not work for Ralph Lauren (he's actually more of a rugby man), taking the whole pile was out of the question, so I just tried to pick out a moderate handful. Having little knowledge of soccer (or football, or futbol), my selection was based solely on appeal--an attitude, interesting colors, cute players, or details like the black armbands worn by the Quilmes team, or the two Estudiantes players posing with their kids (bottom photo).

I’ve loaded these images at a larger size than I usually do, so you can click to see more detail.






*Go here for audio/video.