why i hate something: readymade magazine
Sunday, April 15, 2007
By Dave Stefani
Suddenly your crazy uncle Floyd is cool again. You know the guy I’m talking about: the involuntary bachelor with the duct-taped lawn chairs in his kitchen, the milk-crate TV stand, and the ironing-board “coffee table.” The one who has a garage full of junk that he’s been hording since 1962 because you never know when you’ll need 37 axe heads and an Edsel fender. Just when you thought uncle Floyd’s brand of frat-boy engineering could never be fashionable, along comes ReadyMade, a ridiculous magazine wherein a bunch of young, beautiful, bored hipsters, with obviously too much time on their hands, go out of their way (way out of their way) to devise alternative uses for everyday items. In a self-congratulatory display of privileged white guilt, the contributors to this rag celebrate the types of barnyard engineering that 10 years ago they themselves would have turned their noses up at. But now that arts and crafts are suddenly hip, we all have to be plagued by Urban Outfitters-clad idiots showing us 32 different ways to use a vinyl tablecloth.
