Honeywell Automation - Nice nerds!

Hey, nice nerds! Where'd you get them? 1966. Sure everyone in '66 looked like a nerd if they wore glasses, but the fact that these people are basically sitting IN a computer with the equivalent horsepower of a modern clock radio means they were on the cutting edge of computing for the time. Dig that keyboard with the round keys. I wish someone would make modern USB keyboards that looks like ancient keyboard of old. The closest you can come is an old IBM Model M keyboard from these guys. Yep. I've got one, and it's brilliant. But you can't do any typing after lights out because the noise will wake the neighbors. Practice the drums instead.

Anyway. Nerd jokes!

Joke #1 - "...and right here, the system has calculated the number one reason you're a virgin. This will be great. Hang on, let me get the P.A. microphone."

Joke #2 - "I know all the 'cool' kids signed up for my brother Alan's course, but I think we'll have plenty of fun, too. I'm professor Charlie Parsons, and welcome to my project."

Joke #3 - "See kids? Using our new computer lab, we've 'digitally encoded' the first three seconds of a Herman's Hermits song. Now all you have to do is go invent a dial-up modem and you can 'download' it in only four days."

Joke #4 -"Umm.... ten"

Joke #5 - "Hmm. Nope, Kent. Says right here that there's no way in hell she'll go to homecoming with you. That could have been embarrassing, huh?"

Joke #6 - "Hey, wow! You're pregnant! ...You can stop smiling now."

Joke #7 - "... aaaaand the answer is 'beep'."

Joke #8 - "... now just sign here, and bingo! You've both un-friended each other."

Joke #9 - "... and there's your recipe, stored safely. There. Wasn't that a fun afternoon?"

Joke #10 courtesy of Craig. Hat tip to you, sir! - "...and if you'll look at the printout on Line 2320, Dexter, you'll note that you've scored 'Flopsweat' on the ENIAC Love Meter, the most powerful Love Meter known to man."

DeSoto Fire Dome - Quickie.

Today's my day off, so instead of writing some jokes, I'll just post a nice big scan of a DeSoto ad from 1952. They brag about the "fire dome" engine. It's probably the same thing as a "hemi". I dunno. I like the loosely rendered people living in a cartoon world with their realistic car. These are no arbitrary art decisions. It keeps the focus on the car. Yellow is an odd color for a car ad. It doesn't show the shine as well as darker colors. Nice chrome.

What's in that cartoon duffel bag that Ken is putting in the back seat? Well, probably dynamite and anvils.

Elizabeth Taylor - Swell necking.

There's a thing in commercial art (not just art for advertising, but almost any art you get paid for) where the work of any artist is scrutinized more harshly than a photograph would be in the same situation. Yes, photographer's contact sheets are pored over with insane criticism, but when people know it's rendered, the threshold of "realistic" is much higher than reality itself. My old boss used to say "It doesn't have to be right. It has to look right." Case in point: Liz Taylor's neck.

This is a photograph of Elizabeth Taylor, and she's tilting her head to one side to look winsome or wistful or something with a "W". If this were a painting, the artist would be well advised to present the composition in sketch form first, because people would assume the neck angle is a mistake or an error in judgment. "He neck must be broken. Was she in a car accident?" But here's Liz, right as rain, tilting her head like crazy.


The P.A.G. Nomenclature Squadron has yet to devise a name for this "Tendency for Art to be Judged More Harshly than Photographs" (TAGMHP) thing, but the reasons it happens are not a mystery. People don't tend to question photographs because we still assume they're real. The Photoshop factor has eroded this a bit, but people don't tend to assume you sabotaged your own photograph in Photoshop to make a woman's neck look broken. They will happily assume you drew your sketch poorly, overshooting "winsome" and barreling straight into "crippled". This will happen even if you sketched the model in a perfectly plausible pose, if a bit of an awkward one.

The Ephemera Preservation Dept won't let me mangle a magazine just for the sake of taking it's picture, so I couldn't cut out the page. This ad was printed right into the cleavage of the magazine's binding. Actually, "cleavage" is a bit vulgar, isn't it? Ahem. This ad was printed right into the groin of the magazine's binding, and as such, the name of Liz's new movie is obscured. No matter. We can joke up some of our own.

"Elizabeth Taylor, co-starring in M-G-M's 'Cat on a Hot Tin Rickety Ladder' "

"Elizabeth Taylor, co-starring in 'Her Shoulder Whispered Sweet Secrets' "

"Elizabeth Taylor, co-starring in 'Dial M for Vertebrae' "

"Elizabeth Taylor, co-starring in 'Bury My Neck at Wounded Neck'  Lips by Max Factor, Eyebrows by Sharpie."

Doubleday Book Club - Any 3 Smuts for $1.

So, you're probably sitting there thinking "Dirty thoughts have always been part of the male mind, and women only started thinking dirty in the last thirty years or so." No WAY hose A!
The ladies love the smut*. This 1951 ad from McCall's wants you to join the Doubleday book club and get one of a bunch of smutty books every month for a dollar or something. Maybe the sex scenes are tame by today standards? "Her mouth was on fire for him, and she could feel his need for her, in his fragrant, well-groomed beard. Oh, such Vitalis!" I dunno, but "Shireen...whose ways with men would make even Amber blush!" leaves only a teensy bit to the imagination.

Sure, the titles and language are more veiled than your average porn movie, but that's not saying much. Men's smut is intentionally overt and blatant. Women's smut is more subtle, spelling out almost everything you need to know, and then letting the imagination fill in the one tiny last detail, so you don't feel as naughty, apparently.

Rid shampoo now cures disembodied
floating head infestations as well as lice!

Anyway, there's an interesting little art thing in this ad. Look at the space created inside the luxuriating woman's arm and head. She's the one over the book "Infinite(ly odd) Woman". The line along the side of her face is strangely geometric. It doesn't look right. If this were the era of Photoshop, I'd think the artist did a bad job cutting her out of a background. Click picture for biggerness.
Here's a little secret. Realistic paintings of people are nearly always always HEAVILY photo-referenced. This means that they take pictures of people in the pose they want, and then paint the picture of that exact photo, embellishing details and adjusting the pose while they do so. Nobody paints realistic people purely from imagination. Even if you can pull it off, it takes a long time and you probably have a deadline anyway. So, the line of that lady's head must have been that way in the photo reference. Still, I think she'd look more natural if there were some variation, like with the contour of her hair. And if she had an ear. Just my two cents.

*Just to be clear. There's nothing wrong with smut.

Italian Swiss Colony - Duck for Corky.

Today we feature a 1950 ad for the Italian Swiss Colony, which you may remember from their funny but sad post card. But today's ad is from Look magazine - not a mail-order commercial on daytime TV inbetween The Banana Splits and Squiddly Diddly, which is how I remember the "Itswico" as we used to call it.

There's a philosophy in advertising that all you have to do is get people to remember your ad. Anything else is irrelevant. This is often done with a picture, since humans evolved to dedicate a huge part of their brain to vision. The premise is that "You'll never miss with Italian Swiss". See? It Rhymes. That means you'll remember the name, too. And so, from all of this, we get cork dolls hunting ducks... presumably while drinking.

I'd imagine that a cork doll would have poor enough aim with a tiny shotgun, even while sober. Then add the element of delicious appropriate-for-any-occasion Italian Swiss Colony wine, and poor Corky's bringing home jack squat for the dinner table. Pity too, because one duck looks like it could feed a pair of cork dolls for most of the winter.

It's uncommon for wives to accompany their husbands on hunting trips, but there's Mrs. Corky, egging him on. "It's right there. Just shoot the thing, and we can go home!". Poor drunk Corky. Is there nowhere he can go to escape the nagging of the Missus?

Even if he did manage to bring down a duck with his tiny shotgun pellets and even if he did manage to drag it out of the water (which is probably where it'd fall), how would he get it home? He looks about twelve inches tall. Assuming he has a car built to his scale, the duck would have to go on the roof like the dead grandma in Vacation, instead of the hood, like a dead deer. That'd be like a human pulling a baby elephant onto the roof of his station wagon. Itswico wine must give you the strength of a hundred cork dolls. Now that's a slogan that would make me buy wine.

This ad reminds me of my Mom's neighbor - a guy a few years younger than myself, and a few feet wider than myself. He's a veterinarian and a duck hunter, which seems really bizarre at first. Then I thought about it. He probably just handles dogs and cats at his practice. He uses his two dumb-as-bricks dogs to hunt ducks. This guy really loves dogs and REALLY hates birds. Pity the poor parrot owner who brings their little buddy in for a wing trim. "Ma'am, your parrot is badly in need of being shot, temporarily fed to my dog, gutted, stuffed, and stuck on my wall. He'll be right as rain within two weeks. That'll be three hundred dollars. I try not to make eye contact when I see him out in his yard. A recreational hunter would have a tiny bit of my respect if he could march, unarmed and naked, into the woods and come out with a dead animal... even a rabbit. It should be a level playing field. Hiding in ambush wearing camouflage clothes, shooting at animals with a gun you did not design or build and probably could not repair. Well, that's just being a bully.

My Two Sons and a Whiny Dork.

Joke #1 - A rare production photo of Andy Garcia in his supporting role in the all high-waisted version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Joke #2 - "Dammit, Colonel, people are going to DIE! Your new chicken recipe is TOO CRUNCHY!"

Joke #3 - "Father, if you think I'm going to let you walk out of this office wearing black socks with a white suit, you're out of your mind."

Joke #3 - "Now you listen to me, Dr. Gloom. Either you disarm those missiles, or I'll have Bertrand over there finish sitting on that whoopie cushion, and I don't think You'll like what happens next."

Joke #4 -  "Gary, I'm tired of having you in the family. It's time you were taught a lesson from your brother Cecil and someone I call 'new Gary'."

Joke #5 - The climactic "father's permission" scene from updated version of The Marriage of Figaro, Figaro and Figaro.

Antiques Creepshow - Figuratively freaky.

This morning, the Garage Sale Assault Squad brought me these photographs of actual relics up for sale at antique stores across the midwest. (Maybe the GARAGE SALE Assault Squad  need clarification on their job description?) The locations of the antique stores in question will be withheld to protect you from inadvertent ownership of these artifacts.

LOT #1 SOILED PORCELAIN CAVE MAN

From the mists of time comes a little porcelain sanitation worker. This cave man statuette was perhaps an idol from an ancient race of filth worshippers, or perhaps a sanitation totem, created for ritualistic cleansing ceremonies. His hair is worn in a matronly bun, indicating the civilization's reverence for his "caregiver" role in their pantheon. Clearly, the figure is an object of worship, as evidenced by the bedazzling, which can be seen in his eyes, earrings, and on the bone in his hand.

The seller seems to understand the history behind our little poopsmith, as shown by the princely asking price of thirty dollars. Surely he found a quick home at some local garbage museum or filth gallery after the picture was taken.









LOT #2  DRINKY BEAR

Our second feature is this delightful drunk teddy bear, ready to stagger into your heart and vomit down your aorta, mistaking it for a toilet. "Drinky Bear" was the mascot of a small chain of midwestern addiction centers in the sixties, and this example of Drinky is in fine condition, from his mismatched footpads to his baffling camel toe. Drinky's not dead yet! The "halo" is merely part of the art on the game box holding him up. If you bring home Drinky, you can pretend the price tag on his wrist is a medic alert bracelet, alerting would-be resuscitators of his allergy to vivitrol. The only medicine he needs is your love! And bourbon!

LOT #3  HIDEOUS GOLEM HEAD



This hideous golem head was made by a wealthy Victorian child, who, at the time, was famous for being the youngest guest in the tower of London. Her crimes are lost to the pages of history, but her family could not be found for questioning atthe trial. During her incarceration, Mavis Wintburn created this golem head out of her own hair and sloughed skin material. She called the head "Auntie Innocence", and declared the head to be her solicitor for the trial. She made all her defensive arguments via the head, working the articulated mouth like a puppet. The jury found her guilty of Brain Failure and sentenced her to "a most unpleasant demise of our messiest contrivance". The head survived the trial and made two unsuccessful attempts for the office of Prime Minister. The head found it's way to America in the 1920's and is credited by some for causing the stock market crash of 1929 by dint of sheer evil. Since then, the head has been associated with the Nixon - Agnew campaign, and the Brown's Chicken Massacre.