It’s Just a Plant

by Wendy Dembo

It’s Just a Plant: A Children’s Story About Marijuana, written and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes, is a sensible conversation about pot aimed at kids. Special guest artists FUTURA, Jose Parla, Che Jen, Toofly and others have contributed background art and clothing design to give the book a contemporary feeling.

The colorful storybook takes Jackie and her mom on an adventure to find out what it is and what it does to you and that, like drinking wine, it is something that “you can make a choice to try it or not when you are an adult.” They visit farmer Bob, who tells them how it's grown and its history. Then they see their doctor, who lists some of marijuana's medicinal uses and imparts how it should be used responsibly by adults and not at all by children. Later they talk to some guys smoking weed on the street and the cops that bust them, who explain how it came to be outlawed. The book offers families a way to start a discussion about drug use with young children in a non-preachy, positive manner.

Recently translated into French (the "freedom" version) and German, the non-English versions are free for downloading and for a limited time an English PDF is now free until Valentine's Day as well on the website. Also, a new paperback version is available.

Vita Audio R1 DAB

by Ami Kealoha

Tivoli's clever integration of features like Satellite Radio and good looks into their tabletop powered speakers has made their products some of the more popular ones on the market. With the arrival last year of Vita Audio's R1 DAB, they have some competition. Their aim "to design and build products that we ourselves would be proud to own" and to develop high-performance products with "intuitive operation and utilities that are of real benefit rather than frivolous features that may seldom be used" are the kind of values we can get behind—and their philosophy comes through in the new R1 DAB. Using a 'RotoDial' interface, tuning channels (including the U.K.'s Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) system), switching between inputs and setting alarm and clock functions are all intuitively executed. A front-mounted LCD panel displays info about broadcasts (RDS or Radio Data System) and time and a headphone and an auxiliary jack (also on the front) make it easy (unlike Tivoli's iPal's rear inputs) to connect external devices like mp3 players. For better sound gold-plated RCA inputs in the rear take advantage of their state-of-the-art loudspeaker design. The R1 DAB is available in walnut and cherry veneer, grey and red (pictured), which Paul Smith sells for £180.

Nouvelle Vague: Late Night Tales

by SummerSeventySix

Two of Cool Hunting's musical favorites combine here, as Nouvelle Vague become the latest artists to liberate gems from their record collection for the consistently excellent Late Night Tales series. It's a perfect match and unsurprisingly, the record isn't so much laid-back as horizontal. Starting with the falsetto of Jerry Dammers set to the ska of The Special AKA, it floats past Glen Campbell yearning to be with his love and Cibelle's Brazilian future-folk, before settling on artist David Shrigley mundanely listing weird meals, like a bucket of frogs for lunch. As is the Late Night Tales tradition, the artists choosing the tunes record an exclusive cover version. Nouvelle Vague's take on the knees-up of "Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners turns it into the kind of dusky Parisian jazz that wafts over you like smoke from a Gauloise.

Late Night Tales compiled by Nouvelle Vague comes out 5 February 2007 in the U.K. and the day after in the U.S. You can pre-order from Amazon U.K. or Amazon U.S.

Also on Cool Hunting Video: Nouvelle Vague: Nugroove vol.5

Christian de Vietri

by Lost At E Minor

Like householders the world over, Perth sculptor Christian de Vietri has been spending time in IKEA. Loitering in the Faktum kitchen and between the Billy bookcases, slumped on the Klippan two-seater and filling his pockets with allen keys, de Vietri is assembling something of a different order. For his latest work "Configuration 3: Nuclear family fusion" (2006) currently on show at new Sydney gallery space thirtyseven degrees, De Vietri has taken the components of various IKEA products—the wooden structures of a bunk bed, curtain rails, parts of a rotating cupboard, knives, chopping board sets, chairs and tables—and created from them a tool of torture: a 3 x 3 metre "Infrafamily Conflict Resolution Unit." Imagine a whirligig plus prodding stick: a contemporary reinvention of the barbarous medieval pillory, into which offenders were locked by their hands and neck and forced to rotate aimlessly, incessantly. For anyone who has done battle with a DIY assembly kit, it is clear that De Vietri has not so much transformed these IKEA products as pushed them to their cruel and natural conclusion: IKEA—the cycle of production and consumption—here reads as torture, as gross spectacle. It is possible, however, that the artist's reasons for loitering in the local IKEA are far more mundane. A multi-award winner, having bagged the Art & Australia/ ANZ Private Bank Prize for emerging artists, the QANTAS Spirit of Youth Award, a Nescafe Big Break grant and the honorific title "West Australian Citizen of the Year," Christian de Vietri is a man in dire need of a trophy cabinet.

Lenka Kripac

by Lost At E Minor

It's good to hear that Aussie singer/songwriter Lenka Kripac is kicking around Los Angeles doing interesting things with interesting people. Her "breathy, strangely haunting Björk-style voice" [Rolling Stone, 2004] has been featured in Sydney band Decoder Ring for the past few years on the critically acclaimed albums Fractions and Somersault and now she's branching out to create atmospheric pop songs as a solo artist. One of her songs, "Follow," has been placed in Courtney Cox's new show Dirt. Catch her debut solo show in Los Angeles at Tangier, Los Feliz, on 9 February 2007.