The March of Science #19 - Breathalyzer and tree removal.

Hardy Boys' Prom

Excitable Photographer - March, 1959

The Gazebo Haunted by Stevie Nicks

Space Conquerers

Water-Ski Signals.

Pone enthusiast, Oct 1959

Careful Car Care Made Care-Free #10

Feces Today

Experimental Underwear Association

LaSalle Extension University - Get schooled on your profile picture.

Poor guy. He's from 1959 and doesn't understand that his profile picture on Outlook makes him look dopey and confused. Maybe that's why his paycheck doesn't grow.

Now, you, on the other hand. You understand that a funny Outlook profile picture can be great for laughs. How bout this confused-looking square, for example? You're no stuffed shirt who can't poke fun at yourself. You've got management written all over you. You're welcome!

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Control Center

Joke #1 - The remaining Yahoo employees carefully monitor the account security of the remaining Yahoo user.

Joke #2 - After weeks of hearing tantalizing water cooler talk, Bryce finally decided to tune in Tokyo for himself. Hmm. He didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Joke #3 - Eager for the health benefits of stand-up desks, the team lacked the budget to re-engineer the console. So, they just put the entire room on an eighteen-inch platform.

Joke #4 - Deep inside Donald Trump's brain, the Master Control Team stood ready to dial down the insane jabber, just in case America accidentally became great on its own, before the election actually occurred.

Joke #5 - On his lunch hour, Bryce would sometimes browse eBay, looking for some cool knobs, screens, or possibly meters to put in that one last blank bay at the end of the console.

Joke #6 - "God dammit, Bryce, will you stop trying to 'friend' me."

Joke #7 - Ironically, more than half of the equipment in the room was dedicated solely to figuring out "who dealt it".

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

Careful Car Care Made Care Free #1

Starrett No. 132 Level - Scary good.

Hey, "makers"! Have you got a level, or do you just use a free app in your phone to tell you if the shelf you made out of a cardboard sonotube that you're selling on Etsy for fifteen hundred dollars is level and straight?

I love Adam Savage and everything he does. BUT, I'm pretty sure I've heard him use the word "makerspace" in a non-ironic way. I attribute that to the fact that he's had a career in television, and he's in California, surrounded by posers and useless wankers that need to inflate themselves with made-up terminology to replace perfectly serviceable words that are too "boring", and don't promote their personal brand effectively enough.

If I were to invite my dad over to check out my "makerspace" (back when he was alive - not the only currently available version of my dad, which would be Zombie Dad), he would be able to figure out what I meant, but he would also frown and ask me where I'd gotten that bit of silliness to describe my workshop.

I suspect that you either know the brand Starrett, or you use the word "maker" with sincerity, but not both. Starrett has been around forever, and their stuff is The Shit. So will your pants be, if you price their stuff...

Oof! I didn't know you could spend nearly eight hundred dollars on a level that wasn't encrusted in Swarovsky crystals, sitting in a drawer of Paris Hilton's makerspace.

I have some Starrett tools that were my dad's. They are in a drawer in his mahogany tool box from when he went to DeVry, on a layer of green felt (The tools are on a layer of green felt. My dad did not attend DeVry on a layer of green felt.) Some of the tools, I even know what they're for! Depth gauges, levels, scales (that's a ruler), shims, and calipers. The rest are abstruse counters of engineering arcana that await the day when I surmise the intricacies of their functionality and thereby earn the right to use them. Until then, I am not worthy of their flawless, jewel-like smoothness and unexpected weight. Wait for me, my pretties, until such a time as I deserve thee.

Zombie dad, I regret that I failed to extract all knowledge from you in life, and that these Starrett artifacts remain a tantalizing mystery. My stupid brain is not worthy of being eaten. Until such a time as I unravel the secrets of the Starretts, I will make do with Craftsman, Husky, and possibly Irwin.

Anyoldhoo, the guy in this Starrett ad is kind of scary. See his eyes? Those are all pupil. No, he hasn't been to the eye doctor. He just seems to understand that Starrett is The Shit, and he's going to level the crap out of everything with his Starrett model 132.

What else could Starrett man be used for? Oh, ever so many things, if only some heroic pixelmonger would liberate you from the pages of Popular Mechanics February 1959 and set you free to explore the Ultranet of 2016. Such a hero will rise among us this day.

Run free, scarily enthusiastic man. Go tell the Ultranet how great something is. Go now. Run. Before I change my mind. You're welcome!

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Christy Trades School - Earn big money, Pac-Man.

So you're Pac-Man, and you've graduated from high school, and you're wondering what's next. Maybe you could get a desk job, but that's just not for you, am I right? You're good with your hands. There's hope for a man like you.

If you're good with your hands, Christy Trades School can teach you to fix appliances at home in your spare time. That's not such a bad opportunity, is it? Better jump at it while you can. I mean, it's not like someone's going to pay you to just eat all day, are they?

Here's your Handypacman avatar, ready for all your social networky, chat servicey, online profiley type of things. Everyone will assume it's something Japanese, but everyone are jerks. Why do you hang out with jerks like that? Stop hanging out with that "everyone" crowd. You can do better, buddy,

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UPDATE: Helpful Reader Gunnar did himself some P-Shopping and extracted Pan-Man from this ad, and then extracted Pac-Man's eyes. He didn't mention what he did with Pac-Man's extracted eyes, but the world's probably better off not knowing. There's also a serving suggestion for what kind of fun you could get up to with the PNG he created. Thanks, Gunnar!

Drummond Sweaters - The perfect gift for your asshole.

Who wants to start their day being annoyed? Right! We all do. Let's be annoyed with Drummond sweaters, courtesy of this ad from the December 1959 issue of Esquire magazine.

These two snappy fellows have just beamed down to an M-class planet to do some light exploring and casual assholing. The man on the left is wearing a fairly conventional sweater, but the guy on the right looks Starfleet fresh! Let's hope his sweater is red. At the moment, they're just being assholes to the lady they brought with them, but the real assholes are the advertising industry of 1959, in which this kind of thing was hunky-dorey.

Please forgive the funky scan. This as ran deep into the groin of the magazine, making scanning difficult. In keeping with our catch-and-release, do-no-harm policy toward vintage materials, we chose not to simply slice the page out of the magazine. So, we let the image suffer so that the magazine itself may be preserved... though, in this case, you may well question that decision. See, since we left the magazine intact, in the distant future, when the apes excavate our civilization, they can find this magazine and understand that truly the beasts were us. You're welcome, future-apes.

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Esquire 1959 - Letter form Christmas Village

In the December 1959 issue of Esquire Magazine, Joseph Wechsberg wrote an article describing the cool Christmas traditions of an ancient region of Austria. Freaky costumes and a night time parade made their holiday celebration more like Halloween - and therefore, better - than it is today.

The illustrations look like Maurice Sendak drew them, but the signature is a real puzzle. If any of you can help make out the name, everyone here at GO! Tower would be grateful.

UPDTAE: Alert reader MisterFancyArtPants_2 found out the artist's name! Thanks MFAP!

N.M. Bodecker 1922-1988 (the “N.M.” stands for Niels Mogens, though when asked he would say it stood for “Nothing Much” or “Never Mind”) was born, raised and educated in Copenhagen. He emigrated to the United States after World War II, where for many years his illustrations appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and Holiday.

Anyway, here is the full article, complete with brilliant illustrations. Please forgive the problems on one or two pages, caused by the stubborn binding and the difficulties of pressing it down on the scanner and scanning it in two halves.

Also, because this was 1959, the author dismisses the beliefs of the participants as "Medieval mysticism", which is pretty much how people label something when someone else's mythology doesn't line up exactly with your own favorite mythology. Anyway, these illustrations would be perfect for this year's Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Gift Tags. We didn't do them last year for some reason, but this year, it's on like Tron. Stay tuned.

You'll have to click each image to open it in a new window at readable size.

November 16th. Time for Pointy Tree Day and irrational exuberance!

Hey, citizens! It's Not quite Giant Bird feast and Familial Argument Day, so you know what that means! You're already late with your Pointy Tree Day preparations, you monster! How dare you! Gift ideas shooting into you eye holes immediately. Prepare them to receive irrational exuberance!

Yeah! Now that's some good irrational exuberance. This nice lady really likes her Yashica camera and wee little transistor radio. One eye even has a slightly droopy eyelid for that perfect amount of holiday criminal insanity. I like her potentially violent levels of holiday cheer. She'll be first in line at midnight on the blackest of Fridays armed with a Holiday Retail Effort Baseball Bat.

But let's move on.

Cory appliances. The ladies really seem to love the hell out of them, but that could just be the coffee talking.

"Hi, honey. Uuuhh... Merry... Christmas? How do you like the potential murder weapon sharpener I got you? Everything seems nice and sharp now - which is good, I guess. I'll be locked in the basement if you need anything."

This grateful wife can't stop staring admiringly up at the coffee maker. Hopefully she got her husband a drill and stud finder so he can move the shelf down to a more sensible level.

It's also possible she just doesn't have her legs on.

"Ah hah hah hah ha hah haaaaah! Who'll join me in a cup of coffee? Why? Because we're celebrating! That's why, you worthless band of nincompoops! Despite your ineffectual bumbling, we've finally got Mister Bond right where we want him. Soon he'll come through that secret door and aim his little pea shooter at me. Then I'll do some light monologuing, explain my sophisticated plans and then feed him to my aquarium full of hermit crabs. Today, we're going to put the "mess" in "ChristMESS! Aaaah hah hah hah hahahahahahahahah! Ssssh! Here he comes!"






A couple of graphic gifts, incoming. You can use these happy ladies to make a litte note to let the staff know that you're out of coffee filters... AGAIN! Honestly, you are surrounded by complete incompetents! Anyway, your first Pointy Tree Day presents from anybody, and you got them right here. You're welcome!

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Little Ads - Necessities are necessary.

Household necessity. All houses require Naughty Nellie cast iron object, or suffer fate of life without cast iron Naught Nellie necessity.

Precision transistor radio built right into handsome two-tone black cordovan sunglasses. Observers will never know you aren't wearing ordinary gigantic cordovan sunglasses. Customers are recommended not to confuse their precision transistor radio gigantic cordovan glasses with all their other non-transistor radio gigantic cordovan glasses.

This product not approved for use in treatment of halftone pattern.

Jewel-like nickel plaque is ideal gift for motorist with snooting pretentions. Jewel-like nickel plaque instantly ensnootens any motor vehicle. Official-looking text resembles that of plaques distributed by official snooty ratings board. Self-adhesive plaque can be easily removed to desnoot vehicle, return it to OEM snoot level.

Barbizon Lingerie - Give her the slip.

Pointy Tree Day is on it's way, readers, and we've had the Phil Are GO! Garage Sale and Antique Store Assault Squad ransacking the greater Chicago area for December issues of magazines, to be sure we have the larder stocked with hilarious ridiculousness, all set for a tortuously long holiday season's absurdity.

This 1959 ad in Esquire is just a little sample. Mmmm, nothing satisfies like gold velour curtains. And what could look more natural than a model vamping in an empty room in front of those curtains, framed about as artfully a mugshot?

This, uuh, "dreamling" retailed for $11 in 1959. So what's that in current Futurebucks? Only $90. Wow. And it's not even silk. How do we know? Because they use a made up word for whatever the fabric is: "satin de lys (r)". Ah. Nylon. Got it. Ninety bucks? Fuck you, Barbizon.

Barbizon also has some fantastic names for colors. They're so fantastic that you have a really hard time guessing what color they are. When a color's name is so fancy it's useless as a descriptor, that's pretty fantastic.

"In delicious shades of champagne, snowflake, bliss blue and dawn blush."

Also, that's not even a sentence, but Barbizon chose to capitalize it and use a period, which is more than they felt the opening line of the ad deserved...

"golden gift by Barbizon in our new luxury fabric, satin de lys(r)".

This ad only has four lines of copy in it, and only one of those qualifies as a complete sentence. Of course, anything even obliquely associated with romance is so heavily buried under marketing babble that the essentials of grammar aren't even a consideration.

Considering that this ad was created and published in Esquire Magazine in 1959, it is also possible that you and I are the first people to have ever even looked at this ad without at least one martini in us... and I'm not even sure about me.

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