Man, Our Ship is Frikkin' Stupid

Thy Billowed Pantaloons

Record Club, 1974

Hot Rod Vans, 1974.

Karate - Demolish anybody!

In 1974, Hot Rod magazine chose to offer to pretty much anyone with  a stamp the secrets of complete violence and personal demolition. A reckless decision, I think you'll agree.

Wow. We can't have this kind of power fall into the hands of just anybody, can we? I mean, what would the world be like if every man became aware of the destructive forces they already possess?

You hear that? "Demolish anybody"! What are you waiting for? You've got lots of demolishing to do!

And, then there's the national nightmare of guys scoring with any woman at will. What kind of dystopian hellscape were Hot Rod magazine and Universal Self Defense trying to create?

Click for 1600px PNG with alpha channel background.

If the dystopian hellscape on offer in this ad sounds like your kind of dystopian hellscape, there's good news! The Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade have whipped up a new T-shirt design from the art in today's ad. It's up at our Spreadshirt shop right now. Loads of  color options available, too. Just imagine all the cool fights you can have while wearing this shirt...

https://shop.spreadshirt.com/PhilAreGo/1012335010?q=I1012335010&noCache=true

That's right! He's doing the famous Dynamite Punch, right in your face! Yeah! Either nobody will mess with you, or everyone will mess with you. Don't you want to find out? And don't forget about the babes you'll score with. We can't promise you that, but we totally promise you that.

You're welcome!!!

Little Ads, 1974 - Christmas shopping so simple, an idiot could do it.

How long has it been since we've heard from our favorite mouth-breathing friend, The Seventies? Way too long! Let's check in with the decade that always needs to borrow-some-cash-to-pay-back-this-one-dude-come-on-bro-I'm-totally-good-for-it. We found these golden gems of gold in the back of Better Homes and Gardens from 1974. Let's see what people who watched Maude were buying! Also, we're converting the prices to modern FutureBucks, adjusting for inflation.

Get any clever phrase printed on one of two kinds of shirt in one of two colors, in your choice of one font (probably). T-shirt $23.88. Sweatshirt $33.53. How much for a sweatshirt that just says "we print anything"? Priceless.

Serving suggestion only. May or may not be compatible with teenage mustache on middle aged man.

Ecology pendant containing rice, macaroni, peppercorns, and dried peas lets everyone know you have a pendant full of rice, macaroni, peppercorns, and dried peas. Only $28.70, adjusted for inflation.

Wooden "etc." wall thing tells all your visitors that you have nothing to say, and feel very strongly about it. Fun to see how many people look right at it and still find a way to still mispronounce "ex-cetera".

New! Lady calculator blows the lid off the boutique calculator racket. Designed specifically for milady. Identical version is also available, designed specifically for men. Comes with matching pouch made from kids. $67.30.

Fireplace log roller easily rolls newspapers into logs for those without hands. Is hand operated. $72.12.

Pet's coat of arms displays your pet's Noble lineage and victories in battle, such as The Great Shitted Blanket Event, and The Battle of Lécher les Fesses. $23.88.

Party Invitation 1974 - Stay classy.

If you had cracked the binding in your copy of the Chicago Daily News on Thursday morning, May 23 of 1974, you'd have found this color supplement from Jewel. (That's what we call Albertson's, here in the middle-west.) You would have thought nothing of it at the time, but if you had the foresight to place it in the  Irony Vault for like forty years, you'd have this, which is the same thing, but made hilarious.

Jewel of 1974 wanted to cater your backyard party sooo hard, they brought out the big guns: macaroni salad peppers, giant t-bones, where T stands for "exTra faT", and the tower of Barad-dûr in this Mordor of a festive spread, the Pineapple of Olives and Radishes For Some reason (POOARFSR).

"The dip is off. It was made by those who are Dead,
and the Dead keep it. The dip is off. Please try the hummus."

If some hero were to knock out the text and those green dead men of Dunharrow back there, one could right-click-save-as this thing for use as a brilliant party invitation. Here, let me heroically get that for you. You know what? The Anchorman 2 will be out on December 20th. You may want to use this as your invitation for your Anchorman 2 party. Drop in some text in the Not-Necessarily-Photoshop-But-Basically-The-Same-Thing application of your choice, and you're home and dry. You're also welcome. All in a day's work. Stay classy.

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Click for blank and big.

1975 Vega - Smokin!

Who wants a big two-page ad for a 1975 Chevy Vega? That's right, YOU do! Get ready for some graphic gifts at the bottom of the post, because you gots an honest face an' it's Friday.

Let's celebrate Friday the 13th with a much-criticized Chevy Vega ad. It appears in a few "Crap Cars" - type books which is kind of a shame because I kind of like the way it looks. But then again, I tend to like small hatchbacks.

The aluminum engine block in the Vega had problems. Since aluminum is so soft, engineers usually lined the cylinders with steel sleeves to prevent excessive wear from the pistons as they went up and down. Not in the Vega. The Vega's cylinder walls were bare aluminum, somehow "impregnated with silicone" to act as a lubricant. This cost-cutting, combined with lackadaisical maintenance on the part of many owners, led to chronic problems with burning oil. Recalls and redesigns eventually fixed the problems, but the Vega had already been branded a lemon in many people's minds.

Anyway, I painted out the groin of the magazine so I could have the Vega without a crease going through it. here are some stages of that process, for those who are interested in the stages of that process. Click for the biggers.

The patient, before surgery. Gonna say "no" to some crack.

Stealing a piece of door to hide the crack.

The shut line of the door was drawn back in by hand, like in the old days.

Stealing a section of door to hide the wavy edge of that highlight, created by the lighting and body contour.

Stolen door piece, pasted and warped into place. I had to do this a few times , as the "good area" was pretty small.

Dots connected, ready to make the world go away.

This window presented a weird problem. You can see the building behind the car. Since I intended to make the window semi-transparent, I needed to make the window full of uniform color so the car wouldn't look funny over a different background. I copied the gray stuff around the seat belt and filled the window with that, before partially erasing it all.

Here's a treat for you Vega fans out there... both of you! It's the star of today's picture on a transparent background, stored in glamorous PNG format. Fun to paste into emails or send to former victims owners of Vegas. Get your rude finger ready to right click these beauties onto your hard drive. Left and right, big and small.

Big version, left. I even flipped the text on the tires, the GT decal,  and the badge on the hood. Who's your buddy?

Small version, left.

Big version, right.

Small version, right, or, as my seemingly Italian fingers like to type, "versino".

Camel Filters Denim Patch Offer - The patch that helps you stay smokin'.

Hey, look who's come back for a visit! It's our old friend The Seventies! Hey buddy, how are you? Fat, smelly, and drunkstoned? Shocking. Well, what have you got for us today? A denim pocket offer from Camel? That's very good. Did you cut this out all by yourself? I bet you need a rest after all that work. Oh, all right... A rest and a drink and a smoke. You take a load off while we read your ad. You're so smart and fun, The Seventies. I wish you could last longer than just ten years. Oh wait, you did. Your stink pretty much lingered through 1984.

I can't remember the last time I heard or read anyone using the adjective" dynamite" with sincerity. Good thing, too. I'd be hard pressed not to punch something. Anyway, this offer from Camel is apparently dynamite. A denim embroidered camel pocket for a buck, plus the joy of smoking two packs in order to be eligible. This will look great on your tote bag with no matching colors or textures. Thanks to the ad, we can all have the idea of sewing the Camel patch on our mile-high waisted jeans. These jeans simultaneously function as a bra. Hey! Why no picture of two patches sewn onto a bra?

Too cool for school. The school agrees.

Camel probably sold a million of these things. Believe it or not, people would actually wear stuff like this in The Seventies. Many a camel pocket was pressed to the fiberglass seat of a portable tilt-a-whirl back in the day. Fly by night carnivals were THE place to find licensed beer/smokes products. All the burnouts at any given high school had a camel patch, or maybe a Budweiser mirror: the highly prized prize for learning to shoot fluid into a clown's mouth.

Those of you below a certain age may not believe any of this, if not for hipsters who are responsible for bringing this kind of thing back to life, even if for ironic reasons. They deserve all the hate you can muster. Won't you please muster some today? Know what people like the anonymous hipsters at left would love? A crochet beer can hat. If you see one at a second hand store, buy it for five and sell it to these jackwads for fifty. Wait. You don't know what a crochet beer can hat is? You're in for a treat.

Yeaaaah, that's the stuff. Yes, people did this. No, really. No YOU shut up! In The Seventies, truly brand-loyal drinkers would set aside their cellos long enough to crochet a hat out of some deliciously empty beer cans. You could see these hats out in the wild at street fairs, carnivals, greased pig contests, cockfights, hen-teases, barn raisings, barn topplings,  mud whompin's, harpsichord recitals, and couch burnings. The usual weekend Seventies stuff.

If you really want to, it's not hard to find instructions how to make these on the web. No, I'm not giving you a link. I'm not going to help you do that to yourself. Find your own damn link.

So who wore this stuff? You know, your average professorial type. You can't see in this photo, but this guy has patches sewn on to his elbows. They may even have the camel logo on them.

Click for big.

Bradley GT - Not your Hasselhoff's Kit.

What? A weekend post? Freak ouuuuut! Anyway, the Cars and Gearheadedness team dropped this 1974 ad for a Bradley GT on my desk late last night. Early Saturday edition time! It's from the December 1974 issue of Car and Driver. What's a Bradley GT?

It's a kit car. What's  a kit car? It's almost always a VW Beetle with it's hat pulled off, and a new fiberglass hat in the shape of something different bolted in place. This one's a Bradley GT, whose Wikipedia page exists as five rough paragraphs and some iffy grammar. Here's a sentence with so much to tell you, it can't remember what it wanted to tell you...

"The production run of the Bradley GT was from 1971 to 1981 according to the BradleyGT.com website and owners of the last GT II vehicles to be produced although many of the parts for the vehicles may date back to Volkswagens, Chevy Corvairs and other vehicles from the 1960s."

Fiberglass contains epoxy, kids. Don't forget to wear your respirator. Or, just go out for some fresh air before updating a Wikipedia page about your exciting new project car.

Anyway, Bradleys look pretty good in the flesh, and gullwing doors will always be cool, even if the car carrying them is just a VW Beetle underneath.

Here's a Rude Finger Graphical Gift for all both of you Bradley GT collectors out there. It's a clipped-out PNG of this car on transparency. Big and small, left and right just like always. You can add them to your growing P.A.G. multi-car pileup by right-clicking with your rude finger and saving.

Incidentally, matting out dot-pattern images is just for pros who are pen tool ninjas like me, people. Don't try using your magic-wand auto-selection device on pictures like this or your sanity will break in half. Even with pen tool mastery, trying to make out the edge of the tire in those shadows under the car was super-squinty work. Now my pen tool hurts. You're welcome.

UPDATE! Wups! I just noticed that the rocker panel decal on the right-facing PNGs was backwards. They're fixed now. To avoid mangling the pixels, I grabbed the decals from my own super secret high-rez version of the image and shrank it down into the PNGs and skewed it to fit. If I'd edited the pixels on the smaller images, it would have become blurry. Just saying. And, to anybody quick enough to download the cars with the backwards decals in the ten minutes they were posted before correction: congratulations. You now own two internet collector items almost assured to skyrocket in value, just as soon as easily duplicated PNGs become valuable somehow.