Looking for the Union Label

...d a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company called Union House which carries a functional, if unexciting line of apparel. Unless hipsters take to golf shirts in an ironic fashion judo move, these offerings will never be cool like the domestically made clothes made by the union busting folks o...

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Video Sundays: Design Line Phones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyVe3dD-1mE Am I the only person who has a problem with post WWII consumer objects? When it comes to phones I think they should be black, all the same and weigh 10 pounds. I think the cringe-worthy phones in this film from the fascinating AT&T history channel, prove my point. Some background: For much of the company’s history, AT&T rented phones to users. But in the 1970s, the company tried a novelty line of phones...

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Video Sundays: Slow TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7VYVjR_nwE In the 1990s I had a job at a tiny low-power TV station operated by the University of California, San Diego. To fill the hours between our sparse programming, a fellow employee named Steve would play one of two things: a recording of bird sounds or, if the space shuttle was up, NASA’s feed. The funny thing about the NASA feed was that it was mostly a static shot of a bunch of engineers at Houston Missio...

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Video Sundays: Doberman Outsmarted by Chicken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8qypvHhpL0 Via Doug Harvey, a video that brings back memories. Except that our late Doberman was deathly afraid of chickens, for some reason. Addition from Mrs. Homestead: I wouldn’t characterize our dog as having been deathly afraid of chickens. Rather, I’d say he let the chickens push him around–very much like this video. Once I found him trapped, unable to get to the house because the mean chickens were blockin...

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