News-Record.com

I've written previously about the surreal nature of Converse's Chuck Taylor All-Stars, the shoes I grew up in, now being owned by Nike and manufactured overseas.

The shoes I wore as a kid were emblazoned with "Made in the U.S.A." -- but then, many things were back then.

Tonight, as I was taking a picture of "some of my favorite things" for an upcoming online project, I realized that NONE of them are made in America.

My Chucks were made in China. My iconic America Levi 501's in Mexico and my Blackberry in...well, it actually isn't branded as coming from anywhere. But parent company Research In Motion is from Canada.

If I'd thought about it for five minutes I guess I would have laid money on all of these products being manufactured elsewhere - but having them all in a pile as things I can't do without and realizing they're all imports...it's a little creepy.

What are your favorite things...and are any of them American?

UPDATE: After reading this entry a co-worker relates the following story:

"I was in Wal-Mart looking for a pair of cargo pants. I picked up two pairs and looked at the labels. One was made in Bangladesh, one in Vietnam. So I'm standing there literally thinking: which one of these countries has worse child labor standards? Which of these pairs of pants makes me a worse person?"

Having recently lost some weight, I'm down to one pair of jeans that aren't so big I have to hold them up with my belt pulled to its last hole and the denim scrunched up around my waist like I just arrived at Ellis Island.

So, I went shopping for a new pair of jeans this week. And found that it's almost impossible to buy a pair of jeans these days that haven't been distressed, specially washed or rinsed or treated during their dye process to give them some unusual look or feel. Beyond that, there are so many "cuts" from which to choose that it literally gave me a headache.

In the end the winner was... Levi's 501's.

Now I'm ready to escape from a chain gang and be chased through the woods by dogs and guys with shotguns to the terrifying sounds of Nine Inch Nails...

Even these aren't made the way they always were -- and my pair says the venerable American icon is now manufactured in Mexico and Egypt. But still - their simplicity wins the day.

Here's an interesting photo essay from NYC photographer David Friedman's trip to a denim distressing factory in Kentucky.

It's weird and wonderful to see how these high-end jeans get beaten up.

Why is still beyond me. I like breaking a pair in myself.

Converse has hired a motley crew of interesting artists to design versions of their Chuck Taylors for the Product Red line of clothes, shoes and accessories that raises money for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Companies from Gap to Apple to American Express have designed products for the campaign, but these shoes may be my favorite. They seem to run from $50.00 (not much more than you'd pay for an average pair of Chucks these days) to $90 (which, in my estimation, is way too much to pay for a pair of sneakers but not too much for art that's part of a charity project).

Here are some of the designs that caught my eye:

Chucks by Warwick Kay

Chucks by Camilla Engman

Chucks by Ana Ventura

Chucks by Grandpeople

See them all at Converse.com. Go to the "Product Red" section and see if there's anything you like. Ten percent of the proceeds go to The Global Fund.

This great new line of t-shirts from Wear Science ask creationists to "teach the controversy" in theories beyond evolution.

I've just ordered the one with the universe revolving around the earth.

This month and next you can donate your old sneakers to charity at any Finish Line store and get $5 off a brand new pair.

Check it out.

If you're like me, you probably have too many sneakers anyway. Get rid of them -- bring in three or four pairs and bring home just one for $5 less. You'll clean up your closet, do something good and feel like you're coming out ahead.

Regular blog readers will know my affection for Converse's old Chuck Taylor All-Stars (once the beloved sneaker of my youth, now a high priced, one-ply Nike product made overseas).

A few months ago I bemoaned Converse's 2003 transformation from classic footwear proudly stamped "Made in the USA" to overpriced Nike imprint.

Well...it seems Converse has now teamed with Target to produce "One Star" -- an exclusive line of clothes and shoes that are cheaper than Chucks, but look more or less the same.

I'm ambivalent about the whole thing...

When I bought my red faux-Chuck Taylors from No Sweat Apparel a few months ago someone asked me where I thought I was going to get to wear them.

I certainly could not rock them while doing my gang coverage -- Bloods favor red Chucks but don't like poseurs wearing them, while Crips will break your legs for wearing them in their neighborhoods.

But I broke them out for ConvergeSouth this past weekend.

(Photo by Sue Polinsky)

David Hoggard gave me a little grief for them, but it was worth it. They helped me keep it light in a session that got way too stiff and serious.

The universe has apparently decided to answer the question of whether I could possibly love Target any more by having the store offer a line of David Bowie inspired clothing.

My first thought was, of course, that trying to sell some of David Bowie's looks could be difficult...

But the stuff they've gone with is largely from his Berlin period, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and his later period, "I dress this way because I'm married to an International Supermodel" look.

Pitchfork media jokes that this is "a far better idea than a Low/Heroes/Lodger inspired line of coke-straws."

On the whole, the clothes really look good. This trench coat may have to come home with me...

Bowie won't be the first artist of his generation to sell clothes at a department store -- some years ago Brian Ferry of Roxy Music was the spokesperson for Marks & Spencer's "Autograph" line of clothing (a job that seems to have been disappointingly taken up by Take That). But he was savvy enough to get his music marketed alongside the clothes in Target stores.

You freaky old bastard, you...

Tom Ford, former creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint-Laurent (and graduate of Parsons, where Project Runway takes place, as it turns out), struck out on his own in 2004.

Since then he's been shaking things up with a menswear collection George Clooney loves and swank Madison Avenue men's store...

...a Vanity Fair cover that got Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley naked (thank you, Tom)...

...and now, a cologne (one of many scents Ford has created at $165 per 1.7 oz. bottle) whose print ad campaign strips the niceties away from the "sex sells" ethic and just puts the tiny bottle between a woman's naked, glistening thighs, resting on her waxed pubis.

A not even kind of work-safe link to the actual ad here.

Even more explicit flash intro to Ford's website here.

Holy. God.

If Ford were straight I think people would be saying he hates women. Because he's not people will just accuse him of being a perverse design school guy who gets off on shocking people.

Which is, I imagine, fine with him.

This is the next cover of Rolling Stone.

It is, apparently, a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Guns N Roses' Appetite for Destruction.

Here's the thing about this band that gets me -- and I know it may be that this sort of rock was just going out of style when I began to get seriously interested in rock music but...they just look ridiculous.

I'll admit they look tough next to, say, the guys in Poison:

Or even Montley Crue from that period.

But is there any one of these guys who doesn't look like your little sister could beat him up?

Even with hair-bands as the prevailing trend the guys in GNR must have had special spandex pants created for the big brass pair it would have taken to call themselves a metal band while the guys from Motorhead were still touring, looking like this:

Glam is one thing.

Bowie and Marc Bolan managed to do true glam with a bit of style and edge.

GNR, by comparison, just look ludicrous -- like they put themselves together in the women's section of a Salvation Army that had gotten a lot of oddly-sized donations from an out-of-business S&M shop and then had their hair and makeup done by former beauty pageant contestants who'd just seen a community theater version of Cats.

According to Footurama the powers that be at Skywalker Ranch and Adidas have finally ackowledged that there's a lot of Star Wars Geek/Sneaker Fetish Geek overlap -- and they've created these to get all of them off:

That's right. Darth Vader sneakers.

You heard me, son.

The Darth Vader sneaker is, reportedly, a patent leather version of the Adidas Superstar with gold tags and lace ring.

Ugly as Vader himself, these things are somehow still just awesome.

Those of you laughing don't know the power of the Dark Side.

No firm release date but rumors have them coming out for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.