Snake America XXX
Snake is a bi-weekly email newsletter covering two stupid things available for only money. This week: old military duct tape and a Kalff mushroom lamp. Subscribe now or feel shame.
eBay: 1940s WWII US Vulcanizing tape: Gotta say, this tape looks pretty good for 70 years old. I assumed most duct tape rolls wouldn't make it past a couple winters. Every time I think I'm too deep in collecting--my to-tailor bag is taller than my sister, I on accident bought four issues of a single Lightning magazine four different times because I liked the sled on the cover--I check myself. WWII collectors, the types that might--that have--amass(ed) this, or buy the above or similar items in bulk because they know another flea market freak who has indeed sold 70-year-old duct tape to ... whoever, are worse(1). Like Herb and Dorothy Vogel but with worse taste. Or the opposite? I'm told, by people who are out of my life, that there's a wafer-thin line between hard-core collecting and being a hoarder. I don't believe them. Is the woman or man who makes enough money to pay their water bill selling FDR-era duct tape on eBay on the side a hoarder, with social issues? The storage space of old duct tape hints to that. Or a profiteer? CF, the water bill. Or a woman or man of fine taste? Or ... the scion of a felled duct tape company? While I doubt the tape works, following the warren of related items, as defined by eBay's bottom-page algorithm, to its logical conclusion, one finds:
A "scarce" WW2-era thick brown Army medical department mess tray, stamped 1945. ($28.95 BIN, caps lock listing)
Grease pots, unused from WW2, set against a South Korean (?) camo backdrop. ($28 BIN, mostly caps lock, 6 sold, 3 available)
A postcard from 1942 with a flying V of ... I'm not sure, B-52 planes, I guess, with the note on the back written on a Friday the 13th, marked with a 1c stamp. ($1.75 straight auction, no bids, seller of Vermont, uses the fancy squiggle parentheses with spaces on either side instead of brackets)
I read a thing about how the job of a novelist is not to describe what a housewife is thinking as she stares out the rainy window of her Town Car on the way back from her affair, but to describe what the scene is like when a baseball game gets out. I think that's a more specific definition than necessary. Though that genre could work. Why aren't there more books like Underworld (America, 1997)? The Americans with the best stories are veterans who mis-list period military gear,employ all-caps and live in Arizona. No one's been looking, but they're there, along with more questions than there are mess trays in the world.
eBay: Louis Kalff lamp for Philips: My great friend Greg, former Mizzou varsity hockey player, asked me about a (paraphrasing here), "stark desk lamp for my room that will set off the only other design element in my room, which is an American flag, and I want it to be like Le Corbusier's glasses." OK. I think this thing might work? It's a nice lamp, and while not entirely stark, and I think, when he mentioned Le Corbusier's glasses:
I thought of it. Le Corbusier, an architect/city planner/nude doodler/theory-guy/giant, etc., who was a giant in his field and remains one, also moonlight-designed one of the greatest chairs of all time. He wore thick black glasses, the specifics of which aren't even close to being touched upon in this A Continous Lean article about his wardrobe(2). Neither of us should be writing about him. Greg didn't explicitly say the lamp should be black, but it should be. It needs to be darker than his American flag and have a more dominating color (3). I don't know if this makes sense. Only the night is a stronger cue than the American flag. Nothing else, so long as a US flag is in the room, is louder. This, of course, assumes a good US flag, not a new one. There is no bad US flag, but the 49-star variant, produced for half of 1959 before Hawaii got admitted... A fire couldn't compete with it. So the lamp isn't black and is too round for stark, but good mushroom lamps--there are so, so many, and many cheap--become more fire with age. Philips is cool too, my parents' friends when I was a kid were scientists who worked for them. This lamp was made for them. Kalff, was, according to Flemish Wikipedia (FlemiWiki), a grafisch vormgever. I think that means he wasn't an architect. He was better known for his dressier black lamps, like these on 1stDibs. Those look like they should be in an embassy or library. If you're in Europe, you can use a cutting board for a dinner plate. And one of those curly knives. I'm not sure Kalff did that, though I can't prove he didn't. Mushroom lamps look especially good against nothing. So if you just have a blank wall and a 49-star flag, this lamp works.
Thanks for reading. Subscribe please!
Snake
(1) *better
(2) Not sure how this piece differs from a "what time is the Super Bowl on," or "how to get a Yoox coupon" web article, though the comment section is worth price of admission. I don't understand the lede, either. I could spend about an hour here.
(3) "black isn't a color"--a scientist