1937 Studebaker - With new stay-shut doors!

It's always interesting to see companies back in yore trumpeting features that we now take for granted. Like, there must have been great ads for the first one-hundred-minute cassette tape shouting about "over three albums of music in your pocket!" You know... quaint. Apparently, back in '37, it was a feat to keep the doors on a car from flopping open on rough pavement.

Since it's 1937, the car is dripping in art deco dignity. And, of course, it's over twelve Yarises long, because "'Merica, goddammit." However, There are some funny-ish things like "beats lowest priced cars in oil economy". So, burning less oil was new and exciting, it seems.

It also made parking the car a snap, because the steering rack had differential gearing or something, so the steering wheel was easy to turn. Nothing is mentioned of the sheer length of the car, probably because that was a definite selling point, not a drawback. My garage was built in 1954, and with my car in it, I still have room between my bumper and the back wall for my lawnmower and a decent-sized grill, with enough room left over to riverdance with my a-frame ladder. Cars were longer in the past.

The real eye-opener is when the ad mentions how easy it is to open and shut the doors, requiring only a "gentle push or pull". Fair enough, but the last line of that paragraph shows how good we have it here in The Future:

Say what? Ladies and gentlemen, we are truly spoilt. I get annoyed when my car momentarily loses bluetooth connectivity with my library-of-congress-storing pocket supercomputer slash communications miracle, but in 1937, it was something to brag about if your car's doors didn't jiggle open when you drive over some broken tarmac. Also remember that this was before the time of seatbelts, so if your car couldn't keep it's doors shut, there wasn't much between you and an eleven-foot drop to the pavement from the seat in your giant American luxo-barge. Maybe you could grab ahold of the running board as you fell past it, but that would only dislocate your shoulder because you had, by then, achieved terminal velocity.

See those pants the ranger is wearing? Those are called "jodhpurs", (pronounced "jahd-pers" with the accent on the first syllable). So what's up with those goofy pants? Well, they get their name from a city in India where they were invented. Long story short, in the 1800s, they didn't have stretchy fabrics yet, and the giant balloon butt on these pants allowed for better maneuvering in the saddle when playing polo.

Since horses were - and are - a bit of a luxury item, any pants associated with The Horsey Set became a status symbol, regardless of how stupid they look when you're not on a horsey. So, the fashion  world being an arbitrary and frivolous idiot, jodhpurs found a place in the wardrobes of any poser who wanted to look like a rich person who owns horses, but not the kind of rich person who'd own two pair of pants. You've GOT to wear your jodhpurs aorund town. Otherwise, how would everyone know you're rich enuogh to have horses? Guh!

They can still be found today, unfortunately, see?My ex girlfriend had a pair of these. Why would a woman worry constantly about the size of her butt and then wear pants that make her look like a deflated Nell Carter? The first time I saw her in them, I wanted to invite her to change her diaper before we went to dinner. But we all know that  only women can play that role... the role of "You're not leaving the house like that." because guys are always wrong about everything. So instead, I said something like "Hi! Ready to go? I like your earrings." I am a hero.

Now that we do have stretchy fabrics, riding pants don't have to look like that. Modern riding pants have completely reversed the trend of "least flattering thing in the world" and are now pretty much the greatest thing ever. A way long time ago, I knew a totally different girl who lived in the country and had horses, and she wore these. Hel-looooooo nurse! I have no idea where she is now. Probably something horsey. Horses get all the breaks.

So, thank you, stretchy fabric, and thank you stay-shut doors. But really, thank you stretchy fabric. We live in an age of wonders.

Click for big.

International Trucks - What can orange do for you?

Yesterday was absolute shit. One of the wheel-swallowing potholes, to be readily found around Chicgao at this time of year, went ahead and swallowed my wheel. Instant pinchflat of the non-repairable variety. It was 5:30 a.m. so it was still completely dark outside and pissing down 36 degree rain, so i limped the car to the nearest underpass to try and get out of the rain. Once there, I immediately saw that I'd be trying to change a tire in a basically flooded underpass with three inches of muddy ice water to kneel in. Once in place, the jack was half submerged, which meant that every time I turned the crank, my hands were underwater. On the plus side, the water soon began to feel warm to me, which was good and bad, because it actually hadn't changed temperature. Luckily, I didn't drop any of the lug nuts in the water and the pathetic temporary-use spare had the gas to hold up the car. Small favors. Abandoning any hopes of making it into the office, I hobbled the car back home and took a very long shower of raw flame, trying to regain the sensation in my hands. As you may guess, the next six hours of my day were spent sitting in the Customer Holding Pen of the tire place, three hundred dollars lighter, purchasing two new front tires (Because you always replace them in pairs. Everyone knows this.), one of which was covered by my "Chicago Pavement Chasm Insurance Optional Tire Policy That You're Stupid if you Don't Buy It" and NOT buying a new rim, because, by some stroke of luck, I hadn't destroyed the rim.

This morning, I re-attempted to drive on Chicago's highways, and so I was rewarded with a rock, kicked up by a semi, that shattered the quarter window on my driver's side. I promise I'm not making this up. Life is good.

Hey. Nice orange truck. It's funny how I find myself unable to think of anything funny to write just now. Please enjoy this truck on alpha. Or don't. See if I care.

Click for big.

Click for 1200 px.

Click for 400 px.

Nazi Notes.

Click for big.

Joke #1 - "Assistance please, herr Vonsiatsky. 'Mary had a little lamb. It's fleece was...' Sir, what's whiter than snow?"

Joke #2 - "Okay. Mad Lib ist almost done, sir. We need a noun, but zis time don't say Blitzkrieg."

Joke #3 - "Sir, the latest shipment of swastika-branded wastebaskets has eaten into the budget for the Enchantment Under the Sea dinner dance."

Joke #4 - "Another 'Bababooie' crank call, sir."

Joke #5 - "Really sir? No cheese either? What DO you like on your pizza?"

Joke #6 - "Seven across, sir. Four letters. 'Globally reviled and paranoid political ideology marked by barbaric hatred of all outgroups and favored political change through violence'. Nope. Me neither, sir."

Joke #7 was luftwaffed in by Herr MeinFancyUberBallz_zwei. Very uber! - "Unt draw me like von of your French gurlz, Herr Jack!"

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.    -Mgmt.]

Gillette Blades - They can make the pain stop.

Shaving news now, from 1937, brought to you by a terrifying, razor sharp mascot who looks like he's more than ready to open an artery for you!

"Ouch! The wind has made my skin so blamed tender, I can hardly shave!" You've been there, right? Skin is sore and red. All you want is a little relief. Then there's that one blade that pops up out of the dispenser and starts talking to you. Those big, staring doll eyes. The words that hold such promise of release from pain... from everything. It would be so simple. So easy. You would hardly feel a thing. And then, the sweet bliss of peace.

The eyes are full of answers. The answer. Somehow, those eyes - all at once so disturbing yet reassuring - tell you they want to be close to your skin, with the warm, pulsating vein so close below. He's so cold. Won't you help him warm up? So very close. He can almost see your blood. Almost taste it. Just, almost. So... easy.

Please enjoy the horrifying mascot from today's Gillette ad. You won't want to go anywhere without him, would you? He'd be so cold, without your warm, yielding skin to keep him warm. Print him out and carry him everywhere. Yeeessss, that's it. You're welcome!

White Rock beverages - How's your acid?

So here's a very brief ad that comes tumbling down the tunnel of time from 1937, only to flop on the floor and get stared at by us Future Dwellers. Why? A) Because we've (probably) never heard of the product and B) the health scare they're trying to use on us doesn't ring a bell, so it won't work on us.

Click for big.

Ah hah hah hah. A man is leaving his family to get a drink that tastes "keen". Well done, 1937. You're killing me. Okay, so White Rock used to be... err,..totally IS a beverage company that seems preoccupied with putting fizz in drinks of various kinds. Fair enough. But then there's the description of the drink "on the alkaline side". What exactly the eff?

Well turns out there actually can be an imbalance of acids and bases in the fluids of the body: "acidosis". But there's a different kind of acidosis for a number of illnesses that can result in too much acid in your inside regions - metabolic acidosis, respiratory acidosis, lactic acidosis, MELAS syndrome, Cytochrome C Oxidase Deficiency, etc. Just about the only one you've ever encountered is a temporary lactic acidosis after you work out. It's what makes your muscles sore, and it goes away in a day or so unless there's something really wrong.

So why would a basically normal guy be running off to get an alkaline drink? Because "alkaline" things like sodium bicarbonate counteract the effects of acid. It can help with indigestion and stuff like that. So, in 1937 or thereabouts, it was a bit of a thing to use the phrase "on the alkaline side" when choosing what to drink, as if there was a constant war in your body between acids and bases, and if you didn't keep them in balance by carefully drinking the right beverage, you would die and your corpse would melt a hole to the center of the Earth with all its acidy guts and stuff. Strange that you don't hear people talking about whether they "feel alkaline" or "acidy" these days. It;s also worth noting that you don't hear of people dropping dead in the street from a sudden assault of acidosis. Yes, it's a real illness, but if you have it, you'll know it, and you probably don't.

Ha ha, what a bunch of suckers those nineteen-thirty-seveners were. They would believe anything. Want a modern analog? Let's see. Which to choose? "Carbs versus protein" was so 2001. What's more current? I know. Gluten. A very tiny minority of people have a metabolic propblem called "celiac disease". If they eat gluten (commonly found in grains), it messes up their digestion and causes intestinal irritation. This leads to malnutrition, pain, and other illnesses. Celiac is hard to diagnose, but once you do, a drastic change in diet keeps symptoms under control. It's a tough diet to stay with but as my celiac-suffering brother says "it beats the alternative".

If your dog had celiac disease, your carpet
would definitely tell you.

So now, idiots with no real problems have decided wheat is the source of all their problems (which they obviously don't have or they'd be dealing with them instead of imagining they're sick), and they must "go gluten free". Surprisingly, this is great news, partly because I'm generally in favor of any strategy to remove money from dumb people, and gluten-free foods tend to be expensive, but mostly because marketers will listen to large groups of people whether they're idiots or not. So because of the gluten-free craze, actual celiac sufferers can walk into almost any grocery store and find a pretty good selection of food items to choose from. Of course, you can buy water proudly labeled as "gluten free". See, if you put "gluten free" on your product, you can increase sales, whether or not it's even possible to have, say, non-gluten-free beef, for example. Thank you, retards, for accidentally making life easier for those who actually have your imaginary adopted disease.


I predict that, in the future, so many bored stupid people will convince themselves they are amputees that it will lead to a boom in the prosthetics industry, making sophisticated cybernetic limb replacement affordable for everyone, including people who actually are missing a limb.

Party like it's nineteen thirty nine.

Joke #1 - Hermann Göring's show-stopping reading of his six-part sonnet "I wandered lonely as a verzaubertedecke"

Joke #2 - The 1937 Congress for the International Chamber of Commerce was held in Berlin, where the first six hours were spent debating funding for the "Fantasy Under The Sea Dinner Dance".

Joke #3 - Opening dance number from Berlin Theater Works's performance of "Pardon My Reich".

Joke #4 - "Sometimes a banner is just a cigar."

Joke #5 - "Gott im Himmel! It's called a 'swastika'! Ze next person who calls it a 'bendy pinwheel' vill get a poke in der nose! Just you wait!"

Joke #6 - The presentation of finalist entries in the "Design our Logo" competition at Fox news, 1985. Despite being adored by management, this entry only received an honorable mention, as it was judged to be "a little on-the-nose".

Jim Dillon airlifts Joke #7 to us. Thanks, Jim! - "I've heard of lipstick on a pig, but carnations on a nazi party? This is ridiculous. But seriously, folks, take my reich . . . please!"

Joke #8 is fatally good, and comes courtesy of Commandant Der Ernest Von Scribbler_zwei ( Mrs.) - retired. You may want to only read a few words at a time, whilst listening to the chanting of laments by the men of Q division, just to be safe. Die flipperwaldt gershput! BAH hah hah hah!!!- "Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.   -Mgmt.]

Car Vac

Joke #1 - "I've checked the collector bin twice, Ma'm, but still no baby. Are you sure this is your car?"

Joke #2 - "I'm getting some strange reading here, Ma'am. There's no way one family could have eaten this many burritos."

Joke #3 - "Looks like you came to me just in time, ma'am. We're getting readings that are right off the Cheech-and-Chong-Ometer. We'll need to keep your car over night."

Joke #4 - "Okay, Ma'am. Your aerator is up and running. Just try to drive in the right lane. You'll need to carry an extra charcoal filter, but we sell a special trailer that fits it perfectly. If you don't mind my saying so, your son is a very lucky fish-mutant."

Joke #5 - Ricky could hardly wait for the man to finish vacuuming out the car. He already had to go again.

Joke #6 was contributed by Mr.BeenInThatShopBefore_2, who's probably been in that shop before. Thanks, Mister Been!- "Yes ma'am! If you look at this gauge, it shows I've gotten all those harmful Inviz-O-Rays out of your car. It's totally safe now. And it sure is lucky for you- our 'Invzo Removal Package' is on sale now! It's a bargain at only $175. Normally, we charge twice that. Be sure to tell all your lady-friends. They need this important removal too. Now about those muffler bearings..."

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.    -Mgmt.]

Click for big.

Hires Root Beer - Scotchphobia!

Racism news now, from 1937! Hires Root Beer hates the Scottish and wants them all to die of cancer!

How can that stupid sentence be true? It can't, stupid. However, there's plenty of bigotry to be had in this Hires Root Beer ad. The ad suggests that, because Hires was 5¢ a bottle, the Scottish would love it. Fuck you, marketing douchebags! We've reported hard-hittingly in the past on the myth that the Scottish are cheap. News flash: everybody's cheap. But for some reason, you didn't see angry crowds of Scots flipping over police cars and going all Braveheart over the stereotype. Maybe because they had better things to do, like going all Braveheart over their age-old grudge against the English.

So Root Beer is good for you? What's the deal with that? Well, apparently Pharmacist Charles Hires was the first to commercially market Root Beer in 1876. Before then, root beer was made and drunk at home, mostly in North America, where it was believed to be a cure-all. Then again, everything was believed to be a cure-all by the ignorant savages of 1876.

The key ingredient in root beer was an extract of the root or bark of the sassafras tree. This "original recipe" root beer was mildly alcoholic, but since Hires was a dry guy, his formula was just sodey-pop. Funny thing: it was also highly carcinogenic. Why was that? Sassafras oil was determined to be a carcinogen by the FDA in 1960, which is why all commercial root beer since then is artificially flavored. Don't go looking for "natural" root beer. Or, if you do, be glad you can't find any. Actual root-juice-type root beer is very decidedly non-good for you.

So now, the only reason root beer is bad for you is plain old sugar, which is slightly higher in root beer than in cola... or if you just get run over by the delivery truck. Know what? Back in 1876, they believed getting run over by a root beer delivery truck was a cure-all. If you think of it in a certain way, it kind of is.

Click for big.

Simoniz - Kinda NSFW!

Uh huh, 1937 LIFE magazine. Let's see what's in here. Toothbrush ad. Article on printing. Chevy ad. Crisco ad. Car wax ad with naked lady - a WHAAAAAA???????

If your eyes are virgins, look away. They're about to have their minds blown. If your mind is a child, you're probably one of those jerkoffs who insist on bringing your "therapy dog" on airplanes. But also, your mind should go look at something else because this ad is really weird and, well, just WEIRD. If you're at work, you may want to finish reading the post at home tonight, when you can more safely click through the thumbnail down below for the unedited version of the ad.

1937? Really? Nineteen THIRTY seven? I feel like I've misjudged you. After all, you haven't even seen WWII yet. You're supposed to be all prudish and uptight. I mean, this is LIFE magazine, which could be found on coffee tables of respectable families across America. This isn't Esquire, after all. Well well well! I guess I didn't know the whole story on you, 1937. Maybe there's more I need to know about you? Maybe you have some free time after the Great Depression, before the Japanese invade China? Meet me over in Switzerland. They're cool.

Click through the thumbnail to see the non-mosaiced version of the ad, but don't blame me when your innocent eyes come asking you all sorts of awkward questions, like "Where does car wax come from?"

Click for big and dirty.

Hellman's Mayonnaise - Gloss drop.

Hey, who loves mayonnaise? I do, I do. That's why I use mustard on my sandwiches. if I ate mayonnaise just whenever I wanted it, I'd die of congestive heart failure the in a year.

Okay, next question. What the hell does "'fresh-press' salad oil" mean? Hell if I know, but since it's in quotes and appears in an ad, it very likely means nothing.

When a company puts anything in quotation marks, that's your signal for bullshit. If it's in quotes, that means the advertiser can make up any meaning they want to, which translates to "nothing at all".

Anyway, what's with the two identical brands? There must be some compelling tale about interstate trade or tariffs or tax loopholes when a product is shipped over the Rockies, right? Nope. Turns out on mayonnaise maker bought out another and they both had such a strong foothold on the West and East coasts that the parent company decided to keep their names so as not to lose customers. To this day, Hellman's and Best Foods have identical label designs. Whee. Fascinating.

My mom used to make chicken salad out of mayonn... Dear god what the hell is that????

Green Jell-O, cucumbers, shrimp, and celery chunks? The mystery goop on top had better be barf, because that's what I would garnish this monstrosity with if someone slid it under my nose. 1937, you've got some explaining to do!

A quick Googling reveals this to be some species of "cucumber shrimp mold". I love mayo, but there's not enough of it in the world to make this Cthulhu salad go down easy. I prefer my veggies crunchy, with some kind of spicy/sour dressing on them, not suspended in a gelatinous fruity parody of Amon-Sul.

Still, the rendering is nice, and it would make a decent album cover for Gloss Drop, a wonderful album by neo prog-rockers Battles. Battles make music that, in a way, is a purer form of music than lots of pop music having intelligible lyrics. They use weird time signatures and all kinds of electronic effects without abandoning their guitar-bass-drums sound. The vocals are rarely comprehensible, being buried in pitch shift or some other studio shenanigans. Those rare occasions when you can understand the words, they're weird and abstract enough to leave you to interpret the song yourself from the pictures it conjures in your head. The vocals are used like an instrument, not as narration. Genius. Pointless album cover coming in three, two, one. PointlessalbmcoverNOW!!!

Ice Cream, track two from Gloss Drop, starts with a syncopated looped guitar sample that picks up speed and sets up a brilliant drum beat. Then come the vocals whose meaning matters not at all to me. Their debut album, Mirrored, is also wonderful.

Super-Shell Gasoline - A little comedy.

"'In 25 years you'll swing into main street at 50', says Norman Bel Geddes." BAH HAH HAH HAH HAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! OH man, stop it, you're killing me!! Oooooh god, BAH AH HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

"Main Street won't be a 'stop street' in 1960". "Nationwide, the average motorist makes thirty stops a day..." Oooooo, so scary! Thirty whole stops! Madness! Surely this must be the end times! Oh man, my frikkin sides. Stop it! Norm, you're adorable. Last night I made thirty stops in my car on my way to get a Diet Sunkist out of my fridge.

Norman Bel Geddes was a theatrical set designer, then an industrial designer, and then a hilariously dark comedian. He loved art deco, which was pretty much swimming with the current, in 1937. He also fancied himself something of a futurist. Futurists are people who not only like thinking about The Future - they like prophesying about "what will happen". This is all hunky dorey. SOMEbody's got to think about The Future. However, when you use language like "you will", you're setting yourself up to look like a dope. The good thing is, you'll probably be dead by the time your reign as King Doofus, Lord of Delusion, begins. Better to use phrases like "I think we should..." and "if we built things this way, it would..." etc. etc.

Observe this other miniature that Geddes built for the 1939 New York World's Fair. It illustrates his idea of separating pedestrians and vehicular traffic with elevated sidewalks. A fine idea, and fun to build in miniature! It slightly didn't happen, though. Wait. Did it happen somewhere? Well, it sure didn't become the standard.

Partly sunny, with areas of urine smell.

In fact, here in Chicago, we have Wacker Drive, upper and lower versions of it. It's a double decker mishmash of people and cars all mixed together in defiance of Geddes' prediction. In fairness to old Norm, Chicago predates this Shell ad by like fifty years, so by the time old Norm came around to redesign the American city for us, we weren't exactly working with a blank sheet of paper. But when Chicago didn't like the direction its river flowed, they beat it with a length of pipe until it went the other way. You'd think if we really wanted to do the Norman Bel Geddes thing, we would have done it, probably funded with parking tickets. Ah well. Plus ten points for our total lack of good intentions, right?

Lower Wacker. So dank, even cars are afraid of being murdered down here.

There is one thing I'm definitely glad Geddes was wrong about: teardrop cars. Maybe they were very "aero", but man do they look retarded. The Toyota Prius (the car powered by smugness) was designed to be sort of teardrop shaped, and man does it look retarded. We can do better.

Goo goo g'joob!

But I do love me some miniature cities. Whether the're made of Lego or matte board, I'll take it. We don't know why he built the miniature that features so prominently in today's ad, but he seemed to just build them. Since the world's fair was two years away, it may have been something to do with that. Who wants a special crop of this picture? I do... and I have two thumbs! I think I got that joke wrong. Know what's NOT wrong? Having a picture of this miniature future city, complete with horrible spermdrop cars! If you need to ask why, shut up! Right click these mofos into your heart immediately!

Click for big.

Click for big.