Supplementary Post - PAG Exmas card list open enrollment!

This just in! If you want an actual paper Phil Are Go! Pointy Tree Day card sent to you, send us your address and get in on all the fun. No, you won't get junk mail from us. No, we won't sell your address so some advertiser. No, we won't come to your house and stare in your windows. All that sounds like too much work, man. Alternately, you can have us send the postcard to your work address and we'll stare in THEIR windows... wups.

So, to get a PAG Exmas/Pointy Tree Day card sent to you, yes YOU! All addresses will be torn up and swallowed after the cards go out. Send your address to us at:

philarego@gmail.com

Supplies are limited, so hurry blah blah blah. You know.

Libby's Tomato Juice - What can brown "eew" for you?

Today we have for you an ad freshly delivered to my desk all the way from 1947. Food pictures are hard to get right in the first place, and they don't age well once the colors start to drift over time. This ad for Libby's Tomato Juice has a kind of subtle "browning" that looks pretty good on old magazine photos... except for the food, which is the center of attention here.

There are photographers who specialize in food. Most food dries out and becomes disgusting under studio lights, and the trick of getting it to look good despite all this is interesting reading. I need to pick up a book on this, so that I may know more whereof I speak. What I know about it now mostly comes from stories from friends and dim memory of some TV show I saw a hundred years ago.

So, Libby's, yeah. I don't like tomato juice. I loves me some tomatoes. However, give them to me in their original shape, please. Like peanuts, once they've been molested into a liquid or a putty, I've lost interest. I don't know why. This rule only seems to matter sometimes. I have no problem with lunch meat or candy or most foods which undergo a baffling technological transformation on their way to a cellophane package on my plate, and peanuts in their "natural shape", as I called it, have been roasted and salted to death even then. It's not a nature versus science thing. I just look at tomato juice and brain says "gross". Sorry. I don't make the rules. Brain does. You think it sounds dopey? Try living in this thing.

Anyway, here's a fun fact I heard about this weekend on one of my science podcasts. Tomato juice is actually brown. It needs to be artificially colored to be red. Always has been. Yep. Have a look at this article in Psychology Today, which I was really relieved to find, as I couldn't remember where I'd heard about this. Here is some pasted text from the article:

Would you drink brown tomato juice?  If given a choice, most likely you would refuse the brown tomato juice in favor of the same stuff doped with an artificial chemical that stains the juice bright red.  Even though you know that the brilliant red color of tomatoes fades with time after caning, and you know the red colored artificial chemical does nothing for taste or nutrition, you can't help yourself from consuming the adulterated juice instead of the faded colored juice in its natural state.  Is this rational?

Har har! I found a typo! "canning" has two N's, unless your tomatoes have done something very illegal in Singapore. Ironically, a caned butt, like a canned tomato, will start out a vibrant red and, over time, will probably fade to some shade of brown. Less ironically, I want neither on my dinner plate, unless the tomatoes are fresh.

I'm a bit surprised that in 1947, a white bread magazine like McCall's featured exotic foods like tortilla chips. Are those tortilla chips? Odd side dish for a cup of hot tomato juice. They could be goatskin. I have a couple of doumbeks (Egyptian drums) with goat skin heads that look like these goat skin chips. Searching for some doumbek links was dangerous just then. I see them, and I want to whip out my credit card. Doumbeks are wonderful drums that have a surprisingly deep tone when you hit them in the middle, and an equally surprising sharp "crack" sound when you slap them near the edge of the head. This wide range of sound makes them, in this person's opinion, better than bongos or congas for a small portable "bring it to your friend's house because everyone's bringing their guitars to my Christmas party and we need a drummer". With a doumbek, you can simulate almost any kind of sound you'd get from a drum kit, all in a package about 12"x20".

Wow, a bit off track there. Umm. So, tomato juice is brown and gross, but people like it anyway, and you eat goat skin nachos with it. I don't think the goat skin nachos are going to catch on. This ad ran in 1947 and if they were a hit, I think I'd have heard of them by now. Nice try, Libby.

Here's some unfortunate retouching. The steam rising from the cup (which was added by an artist after the fact, of course) seems to be doing some weird stuff. Where it overlaps the juice, it's solid white, but over the white of the cup, it looks misty. Pity the poor artist back in '47 who had no Photoshop to make this easy. Also, the art director wanted him/her to airbrush in some steam over a white background. WTF? There was nothing for it but to make the steam a pale blue. Morons. Should have shot it over yellow, or almost anything but white. This reminds me of some commercials we worked on years ago, for a toy called The Littlest Pet Shop. It was a toy for girls, and the commercial was all pink and lavender, and we were animating the opening sequence. Girly toy commercials always want every color to be as bright as possible. Of course, the sky was so bright as to be almost white. Then they had us do magic sparkles over a pony or something, and they couldn't be seen against the sky. When your sky is nearly white, you've got nowhere to go but down, in brightness. So, they wound up with colored pixie dust that was slightly darker than the sky behind them. morons. It looked like shit and of course it didn't matter, but I complained about it anyway, to our producer. She told me she understood but just get it done and move on. Wise words. Doing that was still easier than getting through a glass of tomato juice.

1971 Bland Torino?

Nope. Not really, but it rhymes and Ford marketed the Torino as "right in the middle" - the champion of mediocrity. So, they get what they get.

There actually was a fast version of the Torino which everyone now knows as the titular car in the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. It's a nice looking car, and could be had in fast trim. So, no, not bland at all. This ad is from 1971, a year before the Gran Torino came out, but the GT model was around, and it was pretty quick.

The Raquel Welch-looking lady in the top photo looks like she's just walking into the shot. "Oops! I'm not on yet? Okay, I'll go and resume volumizing my hair."

Please enjoy the top two cars in the ad as part of your ever-growing multicar pileup of PNGs. I didn't do the wagon, not because I'm yet another anti-wagonite (I like two box designs), but because the woman and her kid were in the way and I didn't feel like 'shopping them out. Even after they were wiped away, I'd still have to close the tailgate and that'd be pretty tedious and I'm an important man with a media empire to run. I'm not MADE of Photohsop, people!

Anyway, here comes a graphic gift in the form of the red and gold cars. Left and right, big and small. Get your rude fingers ready to right click them onto your drive in three, two, one...

Oh, hey. It's not your imagination. The page is now a little wider. Those people still viewing on an 800x600 monitor need to get with the times, man. Also, they should consider upgrading from a green screen to a color monitor. They don't know what they're missing.

Oh yeah. Also, Phil Are GO! now has a mobile version that is more viewable on your mobile doohickey of choice. Faster loading. Better on small screens, etc etc. No extra steps are necessary. When you look at it in your mobile browser, it should just default to the mobile version. You should see a link at the bottom of the mobile site to go back to the normal version, if that's what you're into. Why aren't you doohickeying with it RIGHT NOW???

Cowboy Cabaret - No parking.

Joke #1 - This weekend, five were killed and over twenty were injured in another hilarious parking mishap at the annual Magoo family reunion. all witnesses described all other witnesses as "roadhogs".

Joke #2 - 2013 Nissan Leaf. Current range on a full charge: to the kitchen and back. Described by manufacturer as "ideal city car".

Joke #3 - May 25, 3077. The head of George Lucas, suspended in a jar of fluid, proudly announced the absolutely-final-for-real-this-time-we-really-mean-it revised commemorative extra special holographic edition of the original Star Wars film. Mos Eisley Cantina scene pictured.

Joke #4 - For the 34th year in a row, the entertainment at the American Family Association's annual conference resulted in violence and ritual sacrifice, due to alleged "witchcraft".

Joke #5 - NHTSA Crash testing facility, 1908. Model T Ford undergoing the stringent "jangly piano test", which would determine whether the vehicle received the coveted "rootin' tootin'" rating or the dreaded "lilly-livered" rating that could spell doom for the auto manufacturer's sales.

Joke #6 - The SEMA convention of 1908 played host to nearly two manufacturers and attracted over twenty attendees, introducing such products as "the Fantabulous Floor Mat Fantastique", the "Emergency Roadside Safety Revolver" and "Doc Whitman's Old Fashioned Traffic Whiskey".

Joke #7 was donated by long time commenter Graigf. Thanks, Craigf! I was able to find out what a "flivver" is, but no results yet on the "hup-mo" reference. You have bested me, sir. Well done. Joke #7: ...coming to you LIVE in glorious FlivverVision, it's the Hup-mo-tones!

Joke #8 comes from first-time joke maker Anonymous2. Thanks Extranonymous! Y'll come back now, y'heah? - Hilldale Blotter- May 7th 1908. Police were soon summoned after Act 1 of Matilda Tannenheid's Octet, The "Nausea-Eight", threw open the doors of their automobile visage, revealing the four pantless gentlemen crooner's naughty-bits were actually being struck by felt covered mallets, operated the keys of her "Organ-Organ" to retrieve the vocal pitches she required. Those arrested were Ms. Tannenheid & her four female vocalist accomplices, all members of the Hilldale Suffragette Movement. The gentlemen received immediate hospice after icing. 

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

Please Stand By.

Our I.T. and Swearing team has spent the day fighting the Blogger layout interface. Turns out a post with weird code in it can break the whole damn template, and since Blogger "improved" the template design functionality, getting the old site back isn't a simple matter. We plan to have this sorted out by tomorrow morning and the jokes can once again spew forth.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the white sidebar and the stupid gradient in the page background. Just kidding. Do not enjoy them, even for a second. See you tomorrow.

[-Mgmt.]

Black Friday Music Shopping Guide - Stay home.

For the first time ever, Phil Are Go! is doing a music review sort of thing. Today is Annual Mercantile Lapse in Judgment Day, when millions of people self-destructively stampede into stores in the small hours and indulge in some bare-knuckle consumerism. Eff that. Buy a couple of gifts online and save the unnecessary expense of having your pelvis held together with steel pins.

If you're a person who reads P.A.G!, you, or someone on your Pointy Tree Day list may be a person who likes music that either sounds old or is actually old. Here are some albums (An album is a collection of songs released as a whole, regardless of what format they are delivered on, so shut up.) that contain no auto-tune. In my brain, good music is any that makes pictures appear in my head. And, a picture of the vocalist singing does not count! It needs to be evocative. These albums do that to my brain. They also demonstrate that jazz is evolving without betraying it's past.

The Five Corners Quintet, Chasin' the Jazz Gone By. The Five Corners Quintet is a jazz band from Helsinki, Finland who are decades younger than the sound of their music. The title of the album pretty much also serves as the band's mission statement.

The album sounds like sixties heist movies. They sound bigger than they are, but they're just a five-piece combo, with just two horns on most tracks. It's mostly instrumental car-chase music with occasional guest vocals by American jazz singer Mark Murphy. The album cover art was a perfect choice. Modern, retro, and very classy.

The astute listener with decent headphones will notice something odd about the sound of the album. It seems that, in their enthusiasm to capture the retro sound, they added a small amount of "analog distortion" to the recordings. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this was done digitally in the studio, rather than recording the whole album on vintage tube equipment. I wish they'd have left that off, but it's livable. You can most easily hear the effect as a kind of "fuzz" over the top of the higher horn notes and some of the cymbals. It was a curiosity the first couple of times I listened to it, but now it doesn't bother me and all I hear is the sound of a spy running through a hotel lobby.

Here's a YouTube clip of my favorite track off the album, "Trading Eights".


 Nicola Conte, Bossa Per Due. Italian guitarist and bandleader Nicola Conte also pours a coctail over your brain with his 2001 release Bossa Per Due. Unlike the Five Corners Quintet, he uses some contemporary electronic rhythms and looping to modernize the sound of his jazz a little, but nothing overt or cheesy.

Like Chasin' the Jazz Gone By, I think this album will age well, and you won't be embarrassed to listen to it in twenty years or so. The computer trickery doesn't interfere with the retro sound at all. Blending the old with the new and making the two sound seamless is the mark of a clever and nuanced artist.

You may recognize the following song from at least one commercial. I think it was used on a Maytag ad for some stylish washing machines in red enamel shot on a black background. That's not where I first heard this song, but I was glad that word was getting out. I think I heard of Conte through Amazon's fairly useful "if you like this you may like that" functionality. When I bought the album, I was relieved that someone was still making music that turns me on.


The songs on Bossa Per Due are less action scene than travel montage. The Vespa on the cover was, again, a well chosen piece of art. The sound of the album is all departure lounges and silver Sean Connery suits. If Conte wasn't Italian, the sound of his music would seem pretentious, but coming, as it were, from the horse's mouth, I have no guilt in succumbing to the very Italian Euro-beat this album moves to. Like Chasin', the songs are mostly instrumentals, but with non-verbal female vocals distributed throughout. This is perfect. It imposes no narrative on the music, letting the sound paint the pictures. Everyone can be a synesthete, and that is no bad thing.

Koop, Waltz for Koop. I wish I could say I first heard Koop at a basement club on a trip to Sweden, but no. I just heard them on a record review on NPR back in 2002, like everyone else.

Koop is, at it's core, a pair of jazz-loving Swedish DJs called Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson. Yes, they like to wear women's clothes. They can act as goofy as they want, as long as they keep releasing albums like Waltz for Koop. The album is a short thirty minutes, but each song feels like a scene from a movie. Waltz for Koop is the most obviously looped and electronic of these three albums, but the work is done with as much sensitivity and taste as Conte. Koop record vamps and clips of a live jazz combo, then build those into loops and cut them together with synthesizers and various guest vocals. The result sounds surprisingly effortless and natural. Your average DJ oaf couldn't pull it off, and that's what excuses the computer infringement on the hallowed ground of jazz: taste and skill.


The songs on Waltz for Koop range from bouncy (Summer Sun) to moody (Modal Mile). This makes for a good live show, and Koop does perform live, by bringing their jazz band and vocalists out on the road. So, out of the machine comes soul. How bout that?

Kooking Kornir - Animal Lung Sconosciuto!

Today we bring you another Fictionalized Settlement Day feast suggestion. Wow your guests with the taste of old Roma: Animal Lung Sconosciuto!

Begin by selecting an animal lung from your neighborhood open-air market's animal segment vendor. Choose the animal according to the number of guests you need to feed. A sheep lung will feed just two people romantically, but a sperm whale lung can feed an average old-world village, and will require a specially reinforced table.

If you happen to know that your family enjoys a char-grilled sort of flavor, ask your old-world market vendor if he has any lungs donated by animals that were chain smokers who died of emphysema. Almost all people and animals in old Europe smoke cigarettes - sometimes two or three at once, so it shouldn't be hard to source a "smoked lung".

Enhance your old-world market experience by wearing a sun hat held on with a gauzy scarf. Also, hold hands with someone and laugh randomly. Consider twirling.

Bring home your carefully chosen animal lung in a paper grocery bag with celery and an inedible loaf of long, thin bread sticking out of the top. Once inside your home, discard these.

Place your animal lung in an old-world baking pan shaped like the animal it may have come from. Spray the lung with AdhesiveCheese brand aerosol food spray. Drizzle with some kind of red. Place in an old-world baking oven for 45 minutes set to lung temperature. During baking, the lung juices will fill the pan and gradually evaporate away, leaving an oily orange film in the lung pan. Do not switch to a clean pan, as this film is good for "bread wiping", usually by uncles.

Garnish with lemon slices and parsley to give you something to scrape into the trash, because our Animal Lung Sconosciuto will leave your family gasping for more! Syödä!