HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#48 :: Pon-tiki

If I may be allowed a generalization, every serious collector is slightly mentally ill. People stuff their entire apartments with Beanie Babies, their warehouses with exotic $1-million sportscars, their desktops with frogs of every shape, size, material and expression. The collector is someone who is compelled to gather like objects together, to prove their collective worth is far and away greater than their individual value in - if nothing else - happiness. The serious collector seeks out pieces to fill in the gaps, variations on themes to make the whole collection richer, the happiness more complete - at least for the time it takes to carry out the transaction. The casual collector looks at objects almost at random and says, "Whoa, cool. How much is it?" at the moment some nerve is triggered deep in the lizard brain. Pon-tiki is one of those things. I found it at Giant Robot on Sawtelle, stared and sweated at the three varieties for something like 15 minutes, and then happily shelled out six bucks for what is basically the bastard son of the Memphis design school and Mr. Potatohead. It's a capsule 1½ inches long filled with about 10 or a dozen little shapes on white stalks. You plug the stalks into the holes and make ... whatever. It sits on your desk. I'm thinking of getting another so this one can have someone to talk to, so I can swap parts, or add more parts, making this one more meaningful. Whatever.