SkyMall Monday: Zenhaus Dog Crate

by Mike Barish on

Living with a dog means giving up much of your domestic life to an animal that doesn’t know how to share space. You live with fur everywhere. Water and food bowls take up part of the kitchen floor. Toys are scattered everywhere. It’s difficult to create a sophisticated living space when there are drool stains on most of the furniture. We run into these problems at SkyMall Monday headquarters thanks to our freeloading tenants. This doesn’t even take into account the space issues. Once you set out some dog beds and set up their crates, you’re dedicating a tremendous amount of real estate to animals that lick their own penises. So how do you maximize space, live in style and also make your home comfortable for your dogs? You simply sit back, relax and let SkyMall solve all of your problems with the Zenhaus Dog Crate…that’s also a coffee table!Crates take up huge swaths of space and ostracize your dogs. By combining your dog’s crate with your coffee table, you use your space efficiently and make your dog a decorative centerpiece while you’re entertaining. Your guests will marvel at your seven-layer dip and how your dog runs around in circles inside your coffee table because he so desperately wants said dip that he can smell just inches above him.

Think that dog crates and coffee tables should be two separate pieces of furniture? Believe that it’s torturous to keep your dog in your coffee table while you serve appetizers to friends? Well, while you keep your dog away from the pigs in a blanket, we’ll be reading the product description:

This furniture collection appeals to dogs’ natural instincts to have their own, cozy sanctuary (like their ancestors’ caves) and the pet owner’s desire for luxury home furnishings.

I think they’re discounting man’s urge to have luxury home furnishing by simply calling it a “desire.” It, too, is a natural instinct. Even when our ancestors lived in caves, they always tried to optimize the feng shui by clubbing their mates and laying then in the southeast corner of their dwellings.

Dog ownership presents many challenges but interior design doesn’t need to be one of them. Keep your dog confined and drinks close by all in one by putting your pet inside your coffee table. It’s simply the natural evolution of both beast and man.

Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.

SkyMall Monday: Shoes and Furniture

by Mike Barish on

There are few things women love as much as shoes. They may love their jewelry more, but shoes make them ambulatory. They may love their husbands more, but shoes make them happier. They may love their children more, but shoes make them look sexier. In other words, women love shoes a lot. Shoes may look good while being worn, they make a home look messy and unkempt when strewn about. Sadly, when removed from the foot, shoes no longer enhance their surroundings. Rather, they detract from the environment that their owner has worked so hard to develop and maintain. As such, shoes – no matter how gorgeous or expensive – are stored in closets, under beds and in boxes. A shameful existence for such worshiped accessories. In the SkyMall Monday headquarters, however, we’ve found a way to fetishize shoes (and the appendages housed inside them) in a way that is classy, sophisticated and practical. Of course, we had some help from SkyMall. When you live with a woman, you live with a shoe lover. That’s why it makes such perfect sense that you can now decorate your home with shoe furniture.There was a time when you could just have a taxidermied human leg on your mantle. It was a handsome conversation piece that was easily obtained and showcased the beauty of the human leg and the shoes that adorn them. Sadly, those days of DIY home decoration and population control have long since passed. Now, people shop in big box stores for home decore and everyone’s houses look like the IKEA and Crate & Barrel catalogs threw up inside of them. However, now you can once again enjoy the aesthetic appeal of shoes in every room of your home without looking like you don’t know how to put away your clothing.

The SkyMall catalog has several ways to decorate your home with shoes. You’d be a fool to refrain from purchasing any of them.

Stilettos Sculptural Table – Pictured above, this is the most straight-to-the-point example of shoe furniture that SkyMall has to offer. According to the product description, the table will “kick up a little fun” with its “high-heeled style.” I’m worried, though, that this shoe may give you punions.

Babette Table – The product description says that the “seamed stockings, red garters, and strappy red heels combine to demand attention in this retro work of decorative art for home or gallery.” By retro, they mean that bygone era that was last night when you dressed like a whore and drunkenly slept with the bartender after drinking alone at TGI Friday’s. Let this table forever be a reminder that men your son’s age still find you easy sexy.

Fishnets & Heels Table – Compared to the Babette Table, this looks like a piece of Amish furniture. It says that you’re delightfully tacky, yet unrefined. Of course, you’re not the only one who feels that way about themselves.

Follies Bergere Boudoir Stool – The product description encourages you to “rest your tired gams on this whimsical, oh-so-French footstool.” I’ve been to France and I can tell you that all of the furniture there looks like this. Even better. the curtain on this stool can be lowered to hide the legs when your prudish friends come over. It’s also worth noting that the shoes on this stool appear to be exactly the same as the one from the Stilettos Sculptural Table. Never doubt my keen SkyMall eye.

Finally, we can all decorate our homes with the most beloved possessions in the world. Once you have all of these shoe tables, though, you’ll need something to rest on them. Thankfully, SkyMall has just the leg lamp for that.

Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.

Paris metro gets an IKEA design upgrade

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Mass transportation sure is convenient, but it’s often far from comfortable. Hard plastic seating. Harsh fluorescent lighting. Pungent smells. It’s not the type of environment where you linger longer than necessary. Global furniture uber-retailer IKEA feels your pain and is trying to do something about it – at least temporarily.

From now until March 24th, the company is giving four Paris Metro Stops an interior design makeover, complete with comfy couches and warm mood lighting. Considering the state of your average urban subway stop, covered in old chewing gum and smelling of urine, the idea seems like a good one. IKEA gets some attention-grabbing advertising and riders get a comfy place to chill out while they wait.

The question remains – how long will those couches stay clean? It’s one thing to enjoy an IKEA couch in your home, but with over 10 million residents in greater Paris, you’ve gotta wonder how long those seats are going to stay clean…

For Helsinki, Design Week 50% longer

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Seven days just won’t work for those crazy Finns. These design-savvy northern Europeans thus had to stretch its design celebration to 10 days. From September 4, 2009 to September 13, 2009, Helsinki will host the Fifth Helsinki Design Week: Do Touch! With workshops, seminars and shopping, you can turn this into a hands-on experience. Don’t worry, the usual exhibitions, fashion shows and studio visits (some spaces normally closed to the public) will be available, too.

The primary exhibition will be at the Cable Factory, featuring designs from the Netherlands. At the same space, The New Draw will introduce nine young Finnish architecture offices that are celebrating a book launch. The Design Market will be home to dozens of vendors selling fashion to furniture on September 5 and 6.

The Open Studios show, on September 9 and 10, sounds most interesting. Creators will open the back doors to their workspaces, offering a rare look at how something goes from idea to product. This is the type of opportunity available only during design week.

While you’re in Helsinki, check out the doughnuts at Snellman’s by the harbor. It’s worth the trip.

SkyMall Monday: Electronic Feng Shui Compass

by Mike Barish on

The SkyMall Monday headquarters is a pretty chaotic place. I’m constantly testing products, rotating hot dogs and pulling children around. But, despite all the schlock that’s littering my workspace, it’s still a calm, soothing and spiritual place. How do I manage to keep things so full of positive qi? Well, with feng shui, of course. Sadly, though, it’s not easy to keep things harmonious when it’s difficult to get your hands on an authentic feng shui compass. Besides, in this digital age, I can’t be bothered with more analog crap. No, I need technological advances to make my life easier and help me practice my pseduoscience with ease. And there’s no better place to seek a tool of enlightenment that utilizes a standard USB port to charge its lithium polymer battery than SkyMall. Which is why I have put my spiritual well-being right in the palm of my hand with the Electronic Feng Shui Compass.

Harnessing positive energy and aligning my life force with my natural environment has never been easier. Now, after a full session of charging, I can use my Electronic Feng Shui Compass to tell me where my ugly orange sectional should go. Maybe you think feng shui is a joke. Maybe you think it’s real but that an electronic device has no place in such an ancient practice. Maybe you think too much. Turn your brain off and just rely on the product description:

Working with electromagnetic energy, this handheld feng shui compass helps you support favorable conditions at home or in a hotel room. Operating with the same technology used in aerospace guidance systems, it locates and calculates energy fields so quickly, you align your physical surroundings to match your intentions.

If there’s a more natural marriage of ideas than aerospace guidance systems and feng shui, I don’t know what it is. They go together like peanut butter and telecommunications. And it’s so portable that I can take it with me when I travel. That will allow me to spend hours rearranging the hotel room furniture until the vibrations of Heaven and Earth heal the my back pain that was caused by rearranging the hotel room furniture. It’s the circle of life, people. Hakuna Matata.

Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.