When I was 12, I really liked reading women’s magazines. A voice of wisdom in a world of tight-lipped adults, they offered up tantalizing life-lessons. Lessons like The #1 Best Sex Position to Try When on African Vacation, and How to Make a Low-Cal Salad Dressing Out of buttermilk and Gatorade Powder. However, by the time I reached 12 and a half, I realized there was mischief afoot. Weren’t the Backwards Cowgirl and the Foot-Facing Tigress the same thing? Hadn’t I taken the “Does Your Hair Color Match Your Boyfriend?” quiz six times? Who was writing these things, and who was editing these things, and what the f!@# was going on?

I turned to men’s magazines. GQ didn’t assume I was dumb, Esquire pleasantly figured I could handle 2000 word articles, and even fratty staples like Maxim managed to wrangle up fresh content for each new issue. But even though these publications were endlessly better than the ‘zines I’d cut my teeth on, the fact remained that they were for dudes and I was a girl, and if that was the only way that I could find happiness in a mag then something was deeply wrong with the world.

It’s been 11 years since I decided that girl mags sucked a huge one, and just over two years since Missbehave came to my rescue. Urban, multicultural, and more often than not, completely inappropriate, the now widely-distributed magazine offers everything that everything else couldn’t. We chatted with Missbehave’s well-worded editor in chief, Mary H.K. Choi, about all the reasons why this young quarterly is making magazines worth reading again.

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At the end of the month StrangeCo will make their descent on classy San Diego for the area’s annual Comicon to unleash a menagerie of characters that might not be so out of place in the fabled zoo of “America’s Finest City.” Their booth will have a bevy of creations from their usual collaborators like James Jarvis and tokidoki in tow. However, they’ll also have a brand partner in crime in the form of the San Francisco artist, toy collector and designer Mark Nagata. Nagata’s Max Toy Company specializes in making hand-painted, limited release figures in the tradition of classic Japanese character toys. If you’re going to San Diego in search of innovative creature comforts, check out Max Toy’s Eyezons, Pharaohs, and Booska figures, amongst others, and maybe snap one up before someone else does. These babies won’t last too long.

Take a look at the toys

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Fresh off returning from his traveling art exhibition in support of his Our Mountain book release, Steven Harrington (National Forest Design) has thrown more visual stimulation our way. With the help of his friends at Element Skateboards, Harrington gives us a sneak peak into the preparation that helped make his recent art tour a success. This brief clip shows a day in the life of Our Mountain as Harrington and company get ready for their opening at Paris’ Lazy Dog Gallery. It’s an interesting slice of life for those of us who have never been privy to the calm before the storm.

This political season you are going to see a lot of buttons supporting various candidates. If you’ve ever been to a political rally you know how important these buttons are — they immediately identify who is friend and who is foe. Thanks to the guys at unconfessableideas.com we now can do the same with typefaces. They’ve done up some pin buttons for Serif and Sans-Serif. Now designer conferences are going to turn as heated as political rallies. Well, maybe not. Check out the pin buttons here and whole website full of clever objects (you might need to know a little Italian at times).

Ben Walters has been busy. He’s traveled across the nation and around the world, before finally calling Shanghai home. In 2007, he turned his focus to the shoe industry, starting ospop. The brand’s first offering are the Tian Lang Trainers, known and loved by millions of blue collar Chinese workers. Like the Warrior Shoes, the Trainers are popular for both their utilitarian nature and iconic design. One Small Point of Pride (ospop) worked closely with the Tian Lang factory to produce a version that stays true to the original design while employing better materials to create a more durable and comfortable shoe. Last fall, ospop released the Skywolf series in three colorways. This summer, the Departure series will introduce an additional six. The kicks can be found in a worldwide network of dealers as well as on ospop.com

Let’s explore a hypothetical: Say you’re at a trade show … like possibly MAGIC in Las Vegas this August. You’re there on the floor of the convention center, eating some fried dough, displaying your laminate with the holographic entitlement sticker, picking up some schwag, when all of a sudden the sales pitch robots at the table gasp in horror. Yes, you’re wearing this shirt. JB Classics Lab was inspired by that same scenario and came out with this colorful quip of a T-shirt for their new “The Dead List” series. The next time somebody in a polo and chinos starts talking to you about shifting your global distribution platform, just tap the front of the shirt and stare straight ahead as you wait in line for Lou Ferrigno to sign your bicep.