Video Game Inspired Housewares

On my latest online shopping discovery, I came across a number of home items inspired by video games and video game design. From soap to a pencil set to baby clothes, here are my favorite video game inspired housewares to show your gamer style at home.

Video Game Controller-Shaped Soap: Probably one of the coolest things I've seen recently, each one of these soap bars has been made to look like a video game controller. My favorite is the very accurate looking PS3 controller. Each soap bar is made with vegan ingredients. These would look pretty awesome inside the bathroom.

Nintendo Print: One of the things we like most about video game inspired design the retro quality. This print of an old school Gameboy is cheerful and a little feminine, which is nice for girls who love games but don't want to make their apartment look masculine.

Video Game Pencil Set: I like to decorate my desk with a set of new pencils in a nice holder or case. It just sets the right "work" mood. This pencil set is engraved with video game "engrish." These are a cute and funny alternative to your classic yellow pencil set.

NES Controller USB: Another fun adaptation of the classic NES controller, this one lets you use one as a USB drive. It's not exactly the most portable USB drive to carry in your pocket, but if you need one that you usually leave at your desk, it could provide for a nice conversation piece.

Mario and Luigi Onesie: Introduce your baby to the world of gaming with these adorable onesies with hand-stitched Mario Brothers hats and moustaches. You can get either Mario, Luigi or a twin set. All materials used to make these are eco-friendly - a definite plus.

The Art of Video Games: Add some retro nerdiness to your coffee table book collection with The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect. This book is a testament to the gaming industry's cultural impact and explores how gaming crosses the boundary into culture and art.

(Images: As credited above.)

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REBNY Video on Real Property Tax Fairness

Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Saturday, March 24, 2012, 10:00 AM
1 Comment

REBNY is the trade group for the commercial and residential real estate industry in NYC. Here’s video that remains on their home page that addresses the issue of inconsistent tax liability between the four tax classifications.

I’ve been remiss in not posting this video since it was produced more than a year ago but it was well done, whatever your view on this issue is. My friend, journalist, columnist, former Crain’s editor and blogger Greg David as well as a number of well respected New York real estate types participate.

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Video Interlude: Lord, Someone Made a "Shit Real Estate Agents Say" Video

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, February 8, 2012, by Sarah Firshein

Not surprisingly, the "Shit [...] Say" YouTube viral-video phenomenon—you know, the original (and excellent) Shit Girls Say and progeny such as Shit New Yorkers Say and Shit Nobody Says—has hit the real estate industry. Also not surprisingly, Shit Real Estate Agents Say, starring Nashville real estate agent Brian Copeland and Atlanta real estate agent Maura Neill, includes a lot of lines like, "It's a grrrrreat time to be a buyer," "It's a grrrrreat time to be a seller," "It has real. Laminate. Wood. Floors," and "I think he actually died in the hospital, not here." Watch in full below.

The Video:

· Sh*t Real Estate Agents Say [YouTube via Curbed DC]

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Video Interlude: Jonathan Adler Joins the "It Gets Better" LGBT Movement

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, January 13, 2012, by Sarah Firshein

These days, interior designer and ceramicist Jonathan Adler is making news not only for crafting fancy toilet-paper rolls or fancy votives, but for contributing a video to the excellent and moving It Gets Better Project, aimed at inspiring LGBT youth who "can't imagine a future for themselves." The YouTube-based campaign was created in 2010 by columnist Dan Savage as a response to the ever-growing crop of national news reports about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens committing suicide, and has grown to include endorsements from such famous folks as Neil Patrick Harris, Ellen DeGeneres, and Kathy Griffin.

In a 1:20 video, Adler—by Curbed's count the first major design-industry player thus far—recounts the bleaker parts of his childhood: "When I was a kid, I felt like a freak," he says. "I felt like there was no hope, and I would never, ever, ever be able to be who I wanted to be and reveal my true self. And so I was depressed, and so I took a lot of salvation in my pottery studio. I was obsessed with making pottery, and that was my sort of dream fantasy world." He encourages viewers to pursue a "life of creativity": "Follow your passion, make art, be creative, learn to draw, and it will get so much better." Here, watch:

The Video:

· It Gets Better: Jonathan Adler in New York [YouTube via @JonathanAdler]
· It Gets Better [official site]
· All Jonathan Adler coverage [Curbed National]

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Video Interlude: What would a TV show starring...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, January 12, 2012, by Sarah Firshein

? Back to top

? Previous: Magnificent House-On-Hill Played Host to Kings and Presidents

? Next: House, Squared

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Video Interlude: Watch a Madcap Video of an Angry Birds Gingerbread House

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, December 30, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

One last gingerbread house—never mind an Angry Birds one—to depart 2011 with bravado? This one's pretty staggering: mad scientist/YouTube user mraakko has used the magic of time-lapse to capture the detailed making of gingerbread house and marzipan birds and pigs. Below, watch.

The Video:

· Ten of History's Most Insanely Awesome Gingerbread Houses [Curbed National]
· Angry Birds - Gingerbread House - Time Lapse [YouTube via Buzz Feed]

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Video Interlude: Watch a Guy Pedal a Bike to Make a Whole House Collapse

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, November 30, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Hat tip to the blog Laughing Squid, which has recently featured the work of artist, sculptor, and messer-upper of everyday objects Michael Beitz. Beitz, who has a background in furniture design, has made chairs look like they're growing clouds, sofas look like they've been twisted and tied into a knot, and dining tables look like the St. Louis arch. Below, he makes the bones of a house collapse and rise up again simply by pedaling a bike. "I started to see these objects as expressions of social functions that could be altered to describe certain anxieties or tensions which occur on or around such objects," he's recently said in an interview with Don't Panic. Just watch, it's cool.

The Video:

· michael beitz & matt monroe_folding house with sound [YouTube via Laughing Squid]
· Michael Beitz [Don't Panic]

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Video Interlude: Man Builds Whole House From 24,000 Used Plastic Bottles

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 28, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Faced with the collapse of the Argentina economy a decade ago, Alfredo Santa Cruz turned trash he had hoped to sell for profit into a full-on, fully inhabitable house. Called La Casa Ecologica de Botellas, it's made of 24,000 interlocking plastic bottles, many filled with sand or water for fireproofing; inside, furnishings are also made from recycled finds. Cruz estimates that 20,000 people have come and taken advantage of his free training sessions, making his project not only a really cool piece of green architecture but also something that combats homelessness around the community. Watch the video below.

The Video:

· Plastic Bottle House [YouTube via BuzzFeed]

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Video Interlude: Watch a Modest 450-Sq-Ft Studio Unfold Into Four Rooms

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 14, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Sustainable-design site Fair Companies—they who brought you the 16-year-old who built a 130-square-foot house and the 78-square-foot apartment—is at it again, this time with a 450-square-foot Manhattan studio that was worked up by Normal Projects architects Michael Chen and Kari Andersen, who turned a basic white box into an unfolding, origami-like creation. The duo constructed a blue multi-purpose closet that seemingly eats space but instead affords it, serving as a bedrooms, office, closet, entertaining area, and more. "I spent my first year out of college reaching in Japan, so I think Japanese sensibilities influenced my sense of space a little bit," explains Eric Schneider, the third-grade teacher who lives here. "This kind of works, this compact way—this is very comfortable for me." In total, Schneider spent $70K on renovating the apartment (including an overhaul of the bathroom and kitchen). "How do you get more out of something smaller without having to make big sacrifices?" he muses. "You'd hope that something like this enhances someone's life—that it doesn't just make things less better." Watch the full video tour below.

The Video:

· Tiny origami apartment in Manhattan unfolds into 4 rooms [Fair Companies]

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Video Interlude: The Best Halloween Decorations Ever, Set to the King of Pop

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, October 25, 2011, by Rob Bear

Now, at some point or another, we've all tried to emulate the lurching undead dance popularized by the Michael Jackson single, Thriller. But few have succeeded in programming a synchronized lighting display timed to coincide with every beat and lyric of the 1982 hit. Last year, one Riverside, Calif. resident used a 140 channel Light-o-Matic to control the four singing pumpkin faces and thousands of lights, achieving just that. Caveats to this stunning achievement? His neighbors must hate him. And don't ask about the electric bill.

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Video Interlude: Watch a Truly Masterful Halloween-Decorating Light Show

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, October 24, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Riverside, Calif.-based YouTuber Halloween Light Show has rigged an otherwise unassuming house with a complex lighting system so that it's synched up to the song This is Halloween from the 1993 flick The Nightmare Before Christmas. According to the project description, the dazzling display was made possible thanks to strobes, floods, thousands of LED lights, and DMX fixtures and dimmers. Whatever that means. Sit back and watch as four pumpkin faces sing and tombstones do their thing, all without a an electricity-bill care in the world.

Halloween Light Show: This is Halloween:

· Halloween Light Show - This is Halloween [YouTube via Laughing Squid]

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How To Build Your Net Worth; Buying Residential Real Estate with None of Your Own Money - VHS Taking Action Video [VHS]

This course was written and designed like a roadmap by the authors to show the average person exactly what the authors learned in their real estate experience in order to equip anyone with the desire to make real estate investing work for them and build their net worth. This video gives you instructions on getting started and using the course.

Price: $19.95

Click here to buy from Amazon

Video Interlude: Watch an Old Ikea TV Commercial About a Naughty Nanny

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, October 7, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Ikea and awkward (at times) questionable commercials are like a MALM and an S-wrench, breakfast and furniture stores, men and MANLAND; in other words, two peas in a pod. Thanks to the folks at Apartment Therapy, some of the furniture brand's best TV spots have been ressurected from the coffin of YouTube for modern-day viewing pleasure. Our favorite, posted to YouTube in 2006 and in a decidedly non-English language, involves a naughty nanny wearing a bunny costume and her paramour wearing a thong. Have a look after the jump.

The video:

· Ikea tv commercial [YouTube via Apartment Therapy]
· Here's an Absurd Ikea Commercial That Never Made it On-Air [Curbed National]
· "Breakfast at Furniture Stores is All the Rage" in Germany [Curbed National]
· Ikea Tests Out "Manland," a Holding Pen for Bored Male Shoppers [Curbed National]

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Video Interlude: See Dick and Jane's Spot, a Wonderland of Wacky Lawn Art

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, September 19, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Photos via Unusual Life

Nearly three decades ago, an artist couple now known, simply, as Dick and Jane, decided to turn their Ellensburg, Wash., house—located some 120 miles southeast of Seattle—into a temple of weird and wacky public art. Now, more than 40 artists have left their mark on Dick and Jane's Spot, a space with more than 10,000 bottle caps, countless found objects (and scraps of found objects), curios as far as the eye and see, and the requisite quotes about life, happiness, laughter, and so on. Recently Seattle-based real estate consultant Marlow Harris, who runs a blog called Unusual Life, visited Jane at home—Dick passed away a few years ago—and filmed a video tour of her little Americana folk-art garden. After the jump, watch.

The Video:

· Dick and Jane's Spot [Unusual Life via Ugly House Photos]
· Dick and Jane's Spot [YouTube]
· Dick and Jane's Spot [official site]

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Video Interlude: Come Take a Tour Through Nanette Lepore's Beach House

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, August 22, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Recently Curbed Hamptons editor Nick Leighton paid a visit to the Amagansett, N.Y., weekend house of fashion designer Nanette Lepore. Actually a barn that was moved to the site in the '70s, Lepore's home features a a wide variety of tastes: "It's a barn, so there's barnwood, it feels like a French country kitchen in the kitchen, and yet the rooms feel very modern," she explains. "I don't want to be beholden to one era or style, I love to mix it up." Lepore worked with longtime designer Jonathan Adler (who also did her Manhattan townhouse) on the space: "We decided to decorate this house a lot of things that we've had forever landed here, and they feel right at home." View the video after the jump.

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Video Interlude: Watch a Sneak Peek of HGTV's Donna Decorates Dallas

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, August 11, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Holy gods of awesomeness, a show called Donna Decorates Dallas exists as part of HGTV's new fall lineup. As if one needed further elaboration, here's the deal: former Design Star contestant Donna Moss decorates homes in Dallas, where she's known around town as the "Queen of Bling." The half-hour premiere aired this week as a summertime teaser, but the season officially kicks off on Sept. 10. In the mean time, view a sneak peek of a bedroom project, where, as Moss explains, "If you notice, everything is very large scale—the bigger the furniture, the bigger the room looks. It gives an opulence and a grandness." What to watch for: the rock 'n' roll pillow and the bedside table carved with verses from the Song of Solomon.

VIDEO: THE BEDROOM BEFORE:

VIDEO: THE BEDROOM AFTER:

· Donna Decorates Dallas [HGTV]

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Video Interlude: New Documentary Puts Urban Design Under the Microscope

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, August 11, 2011, by Rob Bear

Gary Hustwit, the filmmaker behind the celebrated typeface documentary Helvetica and design doc Objectified, has focused on something a bit larger: cities. His new film, Urbanized, is set for its premiere next month at the Toronto Film Festival and it turns the lens on the development patterns, design challenges, and public dialogue surrounding the growth of cities. Starchitects make an appearance, represented by Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer, Norman Foster, and others, but the film also focuses on what ordinary people are doing to transform the urban landscape. After the jump, check out Hustwit's Kickstarter video from earlier this year, his blog at Urbanizedfilm.com for more, and stay tuned for the official trailer, which is due out in a few weeks.

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Video Interlude: This Exists: Totally Insane, Totally Fake Ikea Store Copycat

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, August 2, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

The city of Kunming, nestled in the Yunnan Province in Southwest China, has garnered a lot of media attention of late for its impressively deceptive lineup of fake Apple stores. Now Sky News brings word that the country's knockoff-retail industry has a footing within the home sphere in the shape of 11 Furniture. From the blue-and-yellow shopping bags, massive 10,000-square-foot layout, and cafeteria (that sells not meatballs but "Chinese-style braised minced pork and eggs") to room vignettes, rocking chair designs, and stack of pencils made available to roving customers, everything about 11 Furniture screams Ikea. Meanwhile, nine actual Ikea stores exist in China and "protecting Ikea's intellectual property rights is crucial," according to a company rep. About the brouhaha, one unaffiliated branding expert has this to say: "What we are seeing with the Apple and the IKEA stores is that they are 'lookie-likies', they are not actually fakes." Additionally, flat-pack furniture, that which essentially defines the Swedish chain, is nowhere to be found. Still, the news report on the Chinese copycat is absolutely worth watching. One word for these guys: cajones!

Video: China's Fake Ikea:

· There Are at Least Three Fake Apple Stores in Kunming, China [Racked National]
· Ikea added to fake-shops list in China [YouTube]
· LookallIKEA: 'Fake' Furniture Store in China [Sky via Racked National]

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Free & Clear Quick Start Video : Real Estate System

VHS- learn to get rich with real estate

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Wealth and Empowerment Training Video 3 - Case Studies II (Real Estate Investing)

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