Happy Birthday Radical Rubber

This week marks the one year anniversary of upstart latex sheeting manufacturer Radical Rubber. Happy Birthday!

I can't believe it's been a year. I ordered from them quite early on--my order number was fourty-something. Time flies when you got your head up your ass. (Me, not them).

As with most business bee-day celebrations, there's always a big sale with a bunch of special offers. Oh, and are they tempting. For a split-second, I thought about slagging off school and buying a crapload of latex sheeting instead. Subscribe to R.R.'s newsletter to keep yourself current. Here's not the place for me to promote another company without any sort of remuneration.

Inflatable Art Madness: Big Fucking Rubber Duck

I love giant, random, ridiculous, inflatable objects. This monstrous rubber duck, titled Rubber Duck, is part of the "Loire Estuary 2007," an outdoor art fest in France. It's 26 by 20 by 32 meters and is made out of rubber coated PVC. For more info, go here.

Maybe this giant rubber whale can keep Mr. Big Duck company.

Special thanks goes out to Garlor for posting about Rubber Duck on the IAR. View the thread here.

Latex "Hsu"s for Everyone!

Norman Hsu, the convicted fraudster and Ponzi schemer who raised massive campaign funds for Hillary "vote for me 'cuz I've been thru a lot" Clinton and Barack "no relation to Osama, I swear" Obama, apparently had ties to the apparel industry in the 1980's, reported Women's Wear Daily. That's not so interesting in and of itself, but get this:

While numerous news reports have described him as a "sourcing executive" or "fashion industry executive," no one contacted by WWD was aware of his business activities since the late Eighties. He was accused in California of running a Ponzi scheme in the early Nineties under which he was buying latex gloves for resale, but ended up spending investors' money on himself according to published reports. Hsu pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft in 1992, agreeing to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. -- WWD, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007 (subscription required)

See, this proves that you can never tell who's into latex. Or Ponzi schemes. I'm still waiting for Hillary to call about a latex pantsuit, though. I'm thinking lilac with a large lapel and no pleats on the front of the pants. Pleat-front pants make everyone look fatter than they already are.

It's all Bush's fault!

Today I give you, my dear loyal readers, no pretty shiny pictures and no useful advice. Instead, I present you with violence.

Frustrated? Need to unwind? Why not put on a rubber Halloween mask and try to shoot up a school?

September 27, 2007
Who Was That Mask, Man?
By Sewell Chan

The police said Omeash Hiraman was wearing a mask yesterday afternoon when he was arrested on the campus of St. John’s University with a .50-caliber rifle, but there were conflicting reports about what kind of mask he was wearing.

We don’t mean to make light of a disturbing story. No one was hurt, but the campus was locked down for three hours; Mr. Hiraman, a 22-year-old freshman, is being arraigned today on weapon charges. But we are bothered by slippery details.

During and after the lock-down, rumors swirled on campus that the mask resembled President Bush or Michael Myers, the character from the “Halloween” series of horror-slasher films, according to Peter Doggett, 23, a first-year law student from Pittsford, N.Y.

Chris Benson, the 22-year-old St. John’s student who helped apprehend Mr. Hiraman, said he believed Mr. Hiraman was wearing a President Bush mask.

The police had a different theory. They said that Mr. Hiraman — who at points took off the mask — was wearing a rubber mask with the mouth portion cut away. They said it looked like former President Ronald Reagan or, perhaps, Fred Flintstone from the cartoon series.

So was the mask based on Bush, Reagan, Myers or Flintstone?

News reports couldn’t agree this morning.

The Times and The Daily News, citing the police and Mr. Hiraman’s lawyer, Anthony J. Colleluori, went with Flintstone.

The New York Sun, evidently relying on Mr. Benson, reported that it was “a rubber President Bush mask streaked in red with the mouth cut out.”

The New York Post dodged the issue, calling it simply “a creepy Halloween mask.”

Looking at the picture of the actual rubber mask, we have to say it looks vaguely familiar — and nothing like any of the choices above.

--Article from THEE New York Times online blog stuff

Is it just me, or does the mask look like Marv Albert?

More Leggings and Other Things

Found! in the September '07 issue of US Vogue magazine: random rubber headgear and something like resembles rubber leggings. The photos reproduced below are part of the same spread as the first two in my last post.

In both photos, you can see some type of red latex rubber hat thingamajig placed under the real hats. Don't go crazy looking for these hats on Madison Avenue; my guess is that the stylist cut up a sheet of 0.45mm or 0.55mm red latex and artfully arranged the pieces under the model's hats. Stylists--good stylists at any rate--do that kind of thing when it's time to add extra oomph to the clothing.

The "lipstick-red" leggings are by OMO Norma Kamali, who's known for her fetish-friendly PVC and spandex leg wear. The blurb doesn't say what kind of material the leggings are made out of, but they sure do look like latex. It's hard to tell from just a picture because PVC and certain types of shiny spandex sometimes photograph like latex.

In the second picture, the red gloves certainly shine like latex, but judging from the thumb seam, I think they are patent leather. Neither the maker nor the material is indicated anywhere in the magazine.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Dishwashing Glove Gardening + Caucasian China Feti-chic

Found! in the September 2007 issue of US Vogue magazine are two ads I think you will find interesting. Click on the pictures to full their full size.

The first one is an ad for tarynrose.com that pictures a woman in evening wear pretending to do gardening while wearing--stay with me now--fuchsia rubber dishwashing gloves! It doesn't make much sense, but the photo looks very adorable and very elegant. Wouldn't it be a scream if all the starlet "it" girls began wearing brightly colored dishwashing gloves with their borrowed couture on the red carpet?




Next is an ad with a Blade Runner by way of Kill Bill theme for the RAZR cell phone . I think it says "RAZR 2" or "RAZR Z" on the bottom--the font's too screwed up for me to read. (Frankly, I don't give a crap what it says. Some of the buttons on my old RAZR phone started falling off, and I had to put scotch tape on the keypad to save them.) Too bad the outfit is not rubber; it's made out of some kind of PVC fabric. I can't tell exactly what material the accessories are made out of.

Brazil: Steampunk Lumpen Totalitarian Bureaucratic Nightmare

Suspicion breeds confidence. --Brazil

What do ducts run amok, terrorist bombings, retro-futuristic steampunk imagery, lumpen totalitarian bureaucracy and Robert DeNiro have in common? The movie Brazil of course! Jonathan Pryce stars in this black comedy directed by Terry Gilliam (one of the guys from Monty Python) . Besides Robert DeNiro it also features Michael Palin (another Monty Python guy). The movie's from 1985, so you can be sure it does not have that perfectly bland digital commercial patina you see in every movie made nowadays.

The sets and costumes are absolutely amazing-- too amazing even for a government mule to scoff at. And yes, there is some random rubber content in the movie, though much of can be easily missed. Keep an eye out for the evil cops in gas masks and some random guy breathing into a rubber bag at what looks like a phone booth.

Rubber Animal Farm

Inflatable rubber whale helps scientists rescue stranded whales. Story below.

Screw politics! The Rubber Betty Blog gives you all the news that actually matters. Rubber animals are taking over the world, and the media expects me to care about Hillary Clinton? When she starts wearing latex pantsuits on her campaign trail, I'll take notice. But for now, let's take a trip to the rubber animal farm.

Rubber duck armada nears Britain -- article from Ananova.com

The first of 29,000 rubber ducks which have been circling the world's oceans for 15 years are expected to wash up on a British beach soon.

The ducks fell overboard from a container ship bound for Seattle from China in 1992, reports the BBC.

Their journey since has given scientists a valuable insight into surface currents as they have been far more widely reported than the floats scientists use.

"The ducks went around the North Pacific in three years - all the way from the spill site to Alaska, over to Japan and back to North America," said Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer based in Seattle.
"This was twice as fast as the water at the surface - so I began to call them hyper-ducks."

The floating ducks are expected to wash up on the Cornish coast this summer, battered and bleached by their journey through the waters of the Arctic, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

They have floated along the Alaskan coast, reaching the Bering Strait in 1995. It is thought they were trapped by slow moving ice for several years as it then took them until 2000 to reach the Atlantic ocean.

A year later, they were tracked in the area of the north Atlantic where the Titanic sank. Some broke away and headed for Europe, others have surfaced in Hawaii, Indonesia, Australia and South America.

Two children's books have been written about the toys which have become collectors' items, selling on eBay for £1,000.

Beachcombers will know whether these are the genuine rubber ducks as they will have the words "The First Years" stamped upon them.

Rubber ducks' global journey of discovery from the Daily Mail

Read more about our adventurous rubber--well, technically plastic--friends at dailymail.co.uk here.

Rubber whale helps train rescuers -- article from BBC News

A lifesize two-tonne pilot whale, made of rubber, is helping to train groups of marine rescue volunteers in Gwynedd.

The course in Barmouth is being run with groups involved in rescuing seals and dolphins that become beached or injured.

The British Divers Marine Life Rescue Group (BDMLR), which tried to rescue a whale trapped on the Thames in London last year, is running the training.

The course aims to form a group of volunteers to be on 24-hour standby.

Wales coordinator for the BDMLR Phil Lewis said: "The north Wales coast receives a number of strandings of marine mammals each year and we are keen to boost the numbers of trained medics to respond to these strandings."

The course includes lectures on marine mammal biology and first aid and then practical exercises on rescue techniques at the nearby beach.

These include handling injured and stranded animals, first aid, assessing injuries and the refloating of dolphins and whales using the rescue group's specialist equipment.

Three different inflatables will be used during the course, including a dolphin and a seal pup.

Mr Lewis added: "The water-filled inflatable mammals we use are so lifelike that when the course has been run in the past, members of the public have offered to help, thinking they were real!"

He said that the group dealt with around 12 live strandings a year.

"Some are due to disorientation, some are through sickness, some could be pure accident where they have taken a wrong turning out at sea and come into an area where there's no feeding for them," said Mr Lewis.

"We learn a lot with every rescue that we attend, we always learn from things.

"We know from an assessment we can tell whether or not it is a reasonable thing to put the animal back into the water to refloat it or whether or not it does need to be humanely put to sleep."

Veterinarian gives dog a rubber eye -- article from Tampabays10.com

DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. (AP) — One family's golden retriever is getting a new look at life, thanks to a veterinarian who specializes in making prosthetic eyes for cats and dogs.

Lucky lost an eye to glaucoma, and the Needell family of Boca Raton decided to have the diseased eye replaced by a black silicone ball.

The prosthetic doesn't help Lucky see any better, but the family says the nine-and-a-half-year-old dog doesn't look any different, and the fake eye even moves like a real one would.

Lucky's vet says she implanted 25 of the rubber eyes last year, mostly in dogs.

The American Veterinary Medical Association says the prosthetics eyes are considered cosmetic — and they're not the only silicone implants available for animals. Vets say testicular implants for male dogs who have been neutered have been available for years, but they never caught on with owners.

High Tide Heels

Look at these shoes! High heels + scuba gear = "High Tide Heels". Schiaparelli would be proud, I'm sure of it. Unfortunately, I have no additional info to give you other than these images. Is it an internet joke? Is it an anonymous art installation? Is it an actual product? No one knows yet. Let's just keep our flippers crossed that someone will reveal all soon. The most info on this fetish fashion mystery can be found here at the IAR.

Documentary Double Feature

Two feature-length documentaries are up for review today that I think you might find interesting-- actually, what I find interesting. Go ahead and netflix it up if the mood strikes you.

The first is Burden of Dreams directed by Les Blank. It's a documentary about the filming of Werner Herzog's epic Fitzcarraldo, which I wrote about in this post, and has nothing to do with rubber otherwise. Watch it to learn about the native Amazon Indians. Why? If it wasn't for them, I doubt anyone would be able to have a rubber fetish...or car tires. The DVD I rented also came with Les Blanks short, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, whose premise may be guessed from the title. Herzog does eat his shoe but not the rubber sole part.

The second is Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury , a "rockumentary" about the Sex Pistols. Interspersed with interviews and band stuff scenes from what I believe is the fetish classic Dressing For Pleasure. Also, there's video of the interior of Vivienne Westwood's shop SEX showing punk it girl Jordan dressing herself and others in Atomage rubber gear.

I Will Outrubber You

The title of this post is a line from the movie Fitzcarraldo, directed by Werner "I'll eat my shoe" Herzog. If you like two and half hour long foreign movies, check it out. If you have no attention span, buy yourself a six-pack and a bottle of Ritalin and watch it anyway. You get to see a rubber baron (no relation to The Baroness) feed some fish thousand dollar bills.

What's it about? Since I'm terrible at condensing 2 1/2 hour movies into short paragraphs, here's the synopsis from Wik-omnipotia:

Fitzcarraldo, a great fan of the famous tenor Enrico Caruso, dreams of building an opera house in the remote Peruvian city of Iquitos. To make his dream a reality, he purchases a steamer, acquires the deed to a rubber-rich, but inaccessible, area of the jungle, and sets off to exploit this area until he earns enough money to build his opera. However, because his newly-acquired territory can only be reached via a tributary of the Amazon River strewn with dangerous rapids, he devises a more creative solution: travel up a parallel tributary; then, with the manpower of helpful natives, physically pull the steamship over a mountain, from one river to the next.

In one scene, they show a rubber tree (hevea brasiliensis) being tapped for it's sap (latex), and talk about how heavy it is and how much it stinks. Sorry, no dildo-licking fake lesbians playing dress up in this movie. No, that's a lie: I'm not sorry.

The documentary filmaker, Les Blank, made a documentary about the filming of Fitzcarraldo, called Burden of Dreams. I haven't watched that one yet, but it's in my Netflix queue. I'll do a post about it after I watch it if I feel the need to. However, a little birdie tells me that most of you would rather read about the fake lesbos in latex.

Ca plane pour moi....

Here's a random rubber reference for ya, from a pop-punk song that makes me very happy.

It's from that '77 one-hit wonder "Ca plane pour moi" by Plastic Bertrand.

View the rest of the lyrics here and a totally awesome, totally colorful music video here.

Allez hop! un matin
Une louloute est venue chez-moi
Poupee de cellophane, cheveux chinois
un sparadrap, une gueule de bois
a bu ma biere dans un grand verre en caoutchouc
Oooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!
Comme un indien dans son igloo

Allez-oop! One morning
a darling came to my home,
a cellophane puppet with Chinese hair,
a plaster, a hangover,
drank my beer in a large rubber glass
Oooo-ooo-ooo-ooo!
like an Indian in his igloo


Anyone catch that Pepsi commercial with someone doing a cover of this song?

Rubber in WEIRD NJ!

The most amazing 'zine about NJ ever is now in it's 27th issue.

Except from Weird N.J. #27 in a letter to the editor titled " The Truth About Georgian Court Univeresity":

...The story of someone dying under the huge oak trees that still exists on the campus is true. It was not a child and not a hanging. In November of 1921 Edith Gould, George's wife, was standing near this tree and had just driven a golf ball off the fifth tee of their private golf course. She suddenly collapsed and never regained consciousness. The doctors said that she died of a heart attack. Upon examining the body, they found that she was wearing a rubber suit (similar to a skin diving suit) that encased her from collarbone to ankles. This suit and many other dieting fads Edith had tried were said to have contributed to her death. ...

This reminds me of a song called "What a Way to Die" by The Pleasure Seekers [featuring a post pubescent Susie Quatro]. I offer no further commentary.

Take Five! Smoke Break

This one's for all you cigarette smoking Michelin Man lovin' rubberists out there:



I came across this gem in a book called Counter Culture: The Allure of Mini-Mannequins about tiny-sized mannequins and interesting counter top displays from the days of....way before I was born.

France's Michelin Man was one of the most ubiquitous af all branding figures, owing to its countless iterations. --pg. 181

Unfortunately, that's all the book says about this ashtray. I can't tell if the MM sitting on the ashtray is made from actual rubber, but I sure as hell doubt the base is! Hello tire fire! I can't account for anyone else's opinions, but burning rubber smells like skank.

Don't Get Your Shoe Caught in an Escalator

In reference to my first post, specifically those Croc cloggy shoes.

So I'm laying in bed in the fucking afternoon 'cuz I'm too fucking sick to do anything, just watching the news on channel 4 [nbc]. Apparently, there's some type of safety hazard with those fugly Croc shoe clog type things involving escalators. They tend to get sucked in to the escalator jaws or something. Croc HQ corporate said they would put elevator warnings on the hangtags.
I tried to pay more attention, but I was laughing too hard. Newscasts are kind of ridiculous. I just kept staring at the footage of random people stomping their feet in crocs. What's up with all the random footage of random crap in newscasts? I wanna be a cameraman and shoot buildings and people's fat asses as they walk. AND people stomping their feet in ugly rubber shoes.

I tried looking for the news story on the website, but gave up. Because it sucks. To navigate. So read this forum of people arguing if it's the parent's fault the gawddamn kid gets their gawddamn shoes stuck in an escalator. Or here for a newspaper article.

Indeed, life is tough for us connoisseurs of rubber shoes, no?

Elevators can be dangerous places. For instance, I few years ago I was at the Macy's at Herald Square in NYC. For those of you who don't know, they still have the original wooden [yes! wooden] escalators. If you think the regular metal ones are scary [I certainly do], these wooden ones look and sound like they were made by satan himself. So, some old broad decided to lay her fur coat on the handrests things. Good job, einstein. I'm not against fur [send all hatemail to hatemail@kissmyass.com btw I'm fucking vegetarian and have never bought a fur coat in my life, so go continue to eat a burger while you wear leather dr. martins and harass everyone who doesn't share your sacred opinions], but I was against this fugly p.o.s. nightmare of a coat. It was one of them massive eyesores Staten Island housewives cum their plus size granny panties about. So...as expected the bitch gets the coat caught in the escalator. Gets "caught" is not the right word for it: gets eaten is more like it. I couldn't stop laughing. Even the security guard had a look on his face like he wanted to bust out laughing. The old broad was freakin' out like crazy.

Moral of the story is: Watch where you put your rubber-shod feet. Or you'll be ordering only one stocking instead of the full pair.