With Father’s Day coming right around the corner we will be posting some great gifts for you to grab last minute throughout the week. We like this Elemental Compound Shirt by Demian Repucci– and you always thought the old man was easy to figure it out.Don’t worry, Mom doesn’t have to be left out– there’s also a M Om shirt as well. 100% Cotton, American Apparel, $28. We love our dads, let the games begin!

A nostalgic brand, Pro-Keds has been around for more than a while, and are currently in the process of re-inventing their brand image now that the company is owned by hip-hop mogul Damon Dash. Part of the company’s newest campaign is a series of food-based sneakers that are pretty tasty looking. The newest sneaker in the series takes its inspiration from everyone’s favorite childhood lunch staple, Wonderbread. There are two versions, one with a yellow, red, and blue polka dot pattern on patent leather and a second one that implements the color scheme in solids and stripes. Previous sneakers in the series have included milk and cookies models, as well as seperate collaborations with Upper Playground and X-Large. If this type of fresh thinking continues, then it may not be long before Pro-Keds returns to their glory days back in the 70s.

While most of the world waits with baited breath for the winner of the soccer (football) World Cup, all of us t-shirt enthusiasts get our own little competition. The second T-1 World Cup is helmed by Shigesato Itoi and is basically a T-shirt playoff based on gross sales. 24 designers from 13 different countries are taking part in this tee-slangin’ extravaganza. The first T-1 World Cup had only japanese designers, but this time around there’s a lot more international flair. Amongst the participants are Stefan Sagmeister, Nando Costa, Klein Dytham architecture, Singapore’s Phunk studio and Japan’s contingent of Naoto Fukasawa and Jun Aoki. Coinciding with the actual World Cup, this competition also runs from June 9th to July 10th.
All shirts are available online and are expected to ship in early August 2006, which means you’ll have to wait a bit after the competition for them to arrive. The winner of the competition will be the designer whose shirt sells the most, across all sizes–and that person will be declared the T-1 World Cup Champion! So support independent t-shirt designers and buy a great shirt while you’re at it. Via Jean Snow

The essential guide to defending yourself against the coming rebellion, Daniel H. Wilson’s first book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising, is “an uncomfortably humorous survival guide” for the war of the future. Wilson, who received his Ph.D. from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, highlights the future attackers from toasters to would be “terminators” and gives insight into robot weaknesses and guides on weapons to defeat them. It was also announced recently that Mike Myers will star in a movie by the same name that is based on the book. It may be a small possibility, but “take no chances. Arm yourself with expert knowledge. For the sake of humanity, listen to serious advice from real robotics experts. How else will you survive the future in which robots rebel against their human masters?” Get this book for any robot-fanatic, seriously.

Depending on your involvement in the skateboard scene, you may or may not be aware that skate scene in France is coming up in a very big way. Leading that movement is a highly innovative company called Mekanism Skateboards, which has been covered a few times here at JoshSpear.com for its successful collaborations with various artists such as John Maeda and Zevs . This time Mekanism approached internationally acclaimed German artist Katharina Grosse, who is also a professor at Berlin art/design school Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee. Mekanism gave Katherina carte blanche on 100 numbered decks, which she painted in her trademark style using a spray gun. The result is 100 truly unique decks that are literally pieces of art. They can be bought at www.jrqjd.com. Check out the photo of her in the studio after the jump– she is working on what looks like all the decks at once.

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I have always had a fascination with Legos, but never liked being creatively limited to the pre-designed and packaged kits. If you share my sentiment then fret no more because thanks to the Lego Factory, you can now design your own models and have the pieces shipped to you in a Lego-style box. The service, while a brilliant idea, got off to a rocky start due to the fact that you could only pick from parts that came in pre-packaged bags, which proved to be very inefficient if you needed parts that happened to be in different bag sets. To remedy the problem, Lego created Version 1.6 of their Lego Digital Designer software, which allows you to build a model and buy only the parts you need. Once you build your own custom creation, you can share it with other designers from around the world on Lego’s website.