Band-Aid - 'Tis but a scratch.

This 1957 ad for Band-Aids is cute as can be, unless you were a kid who liked washing alone... and having a body.

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These boys have had a fun rough-and-tumble day, getting into good old boyish fun. Sure, life has its bumps and bruises, but Band-Aids are there to turn that frown upside down and make you feel good as new. In this case, that means a few neck stumps and severed limbs. Band-Aids really are a medical miracle. Look how happy these Disembodied Floating Heads are! Such lovable scamp heads!

What's that? I'm just being sick for the sake of it and would I please just throw myself into a volcano? Well, the fact is, these boys - even allowing for their big-headed Precious Moments proprtions - wouldn't fit into that bathtub without suffering some critical "editing". No, YOU shut up! Even if the top and bottom boys had their legs all bunched up, the middle boy would probably need his legs stretched out straight, because the bottom boy is kind of in his lap. Here. See for yourself, and please forgive the fast and sloppy drawing...

Apology accepted. Bathe alone, kids, or you'll have your body cut off.

Good Decorating, Section Number A - Some bathrooms.

The Phil Are GO! Garage Sale Assault Squad was tipped off to the location of a cache of Critical Decorating Guides at an out of state church rummage sale. The GSAS was dispatched to the hot zone with extreme prejudice. Let's just say that we acquired the materials, and that church has a lot more to rummage through, now. So, that's a win-win.

Hey, defecators! Are you looking for some decorating ideas for your dumpnasium in 1970? No? Good! Here are some decorating ideas for your dumpnasium from 1970, courtesy of The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement. They put the "movement" in "home impromovement"! Let's decorate while we defecate!

This bathroom idea features an exotic spanish tile with a pattern that in later years would come to be known as a "magic eye painting". If you defocus your eyes, you just might be able to make out the face of Gabe Kaplan. Or, depending on your eye-defocusment, you might just be able to make out your own deformed, pallid face in the funhouse mirrors. Fortunately, this bathroom has you covered. Once you fill one sink with vomit, you can move over to the other one. Convenience! How do you rinse the barf down the drain? There aren't any faucets, so just install more sinks!

Nothing gives you the confidence to really let fly like absorbent, hard-to-clean cork! Let Napoleon and Napoleon inspire your next strategic movement while the cork walls and lush curtains, printed with a festive handgun pattern, mute all your various noises. Mon Deiu, senor!

This hilarious bathroom will let you enjoy the fun of having a clown smile up at your crotch every time you step out of the shower, without going to a children's birthday party!

This innovative design incorporates a handy clothes washer into your bathroom! Just be ready for visiting relatives to complain about how hard it was to aim into your "funny toilet".

Our refreshing green concept is as light and breezy as all outdoors. The latticed ivy wallpaper lets your whole family live out the universal fantasy of having a dump in the garden.

Eveready Batteries - Quick and easy.

If you ever find yourself the J. Jonah Jameson of a media empire based on looking at old magazines, and if you ever find yourself needing a quick post that's still worth posting, I have some advice. Just reach for your stack of Fortune magazines from the 1930s. yes, they're a pain to scan because their ancient bindings can barely stand to be opened flat on the scanner, and images routinely run deep into the groin between two pages. But, if your Images and Scanning Them squad has the patience and a light touch, Fortune was pretty much jammed cover to cover with gorgeous eye candy.

Today, we have this full page watercolor for Eveready batteries from 1935. It doesn't make me want to run right out and fill my trunk with batteries, but in this ad, Eveready is playing the long game, going for the soft sell. The objective here is the "Eveready love has plussed one!" feeling. It's all cozy and stuff, with a grandpa explaining geography to his grandchildren with the help of an Eveready flashlight.

Or, you can think of it as a rich, demonic robber baron explaining to his grandchildren how the whole of humanity will be subjugated to his will, once he completes the construction of his sun blocker, plunging the world into shadow, and he alone will control the light. It is Fortune magazine, after all. We can also assume that, once grandpa has finished the sun blocker demonstration, he would lead the kids in a rousing chorus of "mu-hu-ha-ha-ha-ha" practice.

Click it for the big version. You deserve it.

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.

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Not really a post. Insulated boots memo.

Memo to myself. Insulation of any kind is just a thermal barrier. It keeps temperatures separated by means of blocking heat transfer, but that works both ways. Insulated boots can be your friend or your enemy.

Since it's now 2 degrees in Chicago, giant insulated boots seemed like a smart thing to wear this morning. However, if you're a person like me, who has low blood pressure (I know. Cry you a river.) and always has cold feet and hands, once you're sitting in a nice warm car in traffic, those thermally insulated boots are keeping your cold feet cold by denying the ambient in-car heat ingress to your shoes. So, you can wind up with a bead of sweat trickling down your chest while your feet are getting numb, thanks to your choice of insulated boots. Irony.

Not only this, but the sheer bulk of the boots means that you may find yourself accidentally pressing more than one pedal at a time, which, as you can imagine, is bad. You may either press the gas while also pressing the clutch or press the gas and brake at the same time so that when you release the brake, the car leaps forward. Unfavorable.

So, I guess you should reach for the Columbias if you're going to clear the driveway, but for sitting in your car, just throw them in the trunk for emergencies and wear your Adidas replica racing shoes for your high-speed commute (yeah right).

Proper post coming soon. Thank you for your patience.

Gibbs Dentifrice, and 2015 Predictions!

It's a new year, citizens! That means... objectively, not much, but to a lot of people embarking on a new Arbitrary Companrtmentalized Segment of Time, it means lots. For example, it's the one time of year, apparently, when you should burn a few calories trying to change something about yourself. The rest of the year, just do whatever is easiest, I guess.

Here at GO! Tower, we have "gazed in the future" using our seven dollar conversation piece and assembled this list of predictions for 2015. Who knows what may hap? Keep breathing for another 360 days and find out... if you dare!

Phil Are GO! 2015 Predictions (Spoilers ahead!)...

1. Stefani Germanotta Lady Gaga will rent last year's slightly obsolete SpaceX vehicle, screw a vacuform boob cover on it, call it a "dress", and hail herself as a genius inventor of mind-blowing couture.

2. The phone manufacturer circle jerk of phone thin-ness will continue, with the release of a generation of devices less than four millimeters thick, while weeping customers beg for a device that can run a full day on one charge.

3. A General Atomics AQ-1 Predator unmanned drone will announace a bid for the American presidency. Critics will call into question its military career, its stance on immigration, and demand it re-title itself as an unpersonned drone.

4. Literally hundreds of people will publicly announce they have never been sexually assaulted by Bill Cosby.

5. Kim Jong Un will find out where is cake.










Here's a good New year's Resolution from Jerry Orbach. Brush your teeth.

Happy Larger Year Number Day (Not really a post), and electric car questions.

Happy Larger Year Number Day! 2014 was an idiot, apart from some nice space stuff that happened. Let's hope 2015 spends less time being completely horrible. Already, things are looking up, as I can definitely recall one year ago venturing out into my yard at least twice on New Year's Day to clear my driveway of Way Too Much Snow and wishing I had a domestic flame thrower in my garage to just set the whole shebang on fire and be done with it. Or, I could just set myself on fire and make slush angels in the driveway.

This week, after a month of surprisingly enjoyable Decemberness, it became Properly Cold in Chicago. Like single-digit cold. Also, I've been seeing a lot of Tesla Model Esses on the road. Did a bunch of people get them for HannuChristmaKwaanzaDon? The noticeable popularity of Teslas leads me to wonder some very pointed questions at electric cars in general, and the news and reviews that talk about them do not seem to address my questions, as far as I can tell.

Disclaimer: Electric cars sound good to me. I would love one, when they meet my needs some day. Electric motors are super torquey, so there's no reason they have to be boring "transportation appliances". If I had a choice, The Tesla looks like a good choice. It's not as dorky looking as the Nissan Leaf, but it costs more than twice as much. However, here are some things you may want to consider before you run out and buy any green luxo-barge of your own:

Cost. Duh. This one's a no-brainer. Electric cars are still pretty new. Battery technology has to catch up to the demands of the everyday driver. Only a few electric/hybrid cars can hit the magic mark of 300 miles on a charge without drinking any dead dinosaurs.

Cold-weather performance. Batteries don't like being cold, and their performance drops precipitously as the ambient temperature also nosedives. This little sticking point doesn't get mentioned in the news much, but an electric car's range is seriously reduced in the cold. See this Forbes article. 

No free heat. Internal combustion engines (you know, the kind that run on gasoline) produce plenty of heat as a by-product of their basic functioning. Any engineer will tell you that this, of course, a symptom of an inherent lack of efficiency. Any heat you didn't specifically ask your machine to produce is a sign of energy wasted. It's a bummer in the summer, but in the winter, getting all the free heat you want is pretty sweet while you drive around in six degree cold. This is not the case with electric cars. If you want to be warm, you'll be running the heater off the battery, further reducing the car's driveable range.

Dead batteries. No battery lives forever. What's the warranty coverage on the car's battery? They cost a few thousand dollars to replace. Ten years from now, the battery technology required to make a car work won't be as cutting-edge, so hopefully they'll be cheaper by then. Current info says that Tesla's battery is warrantied for eight years. Are you prepared to write a huge check to replace your car's battery pack when the time comes to sell it on? I wouldn't buy a second hand electromobile with an eight-year-old battery.

Nibbler, the design inspiration

for the nose of the Tesla Model S.

But then there's the look of the Tesla. It's a good-looking car, generally. I, for one, hate the nose. An electric car doesn't really need a grille (whose job it is to let air in and cool the motor). But because people are afraid of change,Tesla's designers more or less painted one on in black plastic... presumably so timid buyers wouldn't be put off by how unconventional it looks. I think it looks really stupid. That's not a grille. That's a black dot on the front of the car. Fix it! There is a horrible trend right now in automotive design: lots of fake intakes and giant dump-truck grilles that are more than 50% blocked by a structural member called "the bumper". Cleverly, designers wrap the bumper in black plastic, hoping you're easily fooled into thinking it's a grille. I'm not. Guys, either make it a grille or make it a bumper, but it can't be both. Bumper-obviously-through-grille syndrome as a rampant disease and it needs to die, die, die.

This Audi and Hyundai are just two of the many many examples of bumper-obviously-through-grille syndrome that plague our planet's roads. Also notice the pretend intakes down at the corners of the front fascia on each car. Fake macho cheesiness like this is very popular among among the eight-year-old boy customer segment. These cars will be nicely improved by a head-on collision.

Well done, guys. I can hardly tell there's a bumper blocking 60% of the area of your grill, there. But, at least you've got that dump truck look that's so very popular.

So how do you do it right? Easy. Just don't do it. Bumper in the middle, neatly smoothed into the rest of the nose, and grilles above and below. VW's entire product lineup suffered from B.O.T.G. syndrome until about six years ago. Then they fixed it. Same with the Ford Fusion. In ford's case, they just stole the nose from Aston Martin and used it for their car. No shame there. Astons have always been pretty. Both the Ford and the VW still have the dopey pretend intakes at the corners, as if the brakes need that much cooling. Maybe we can look forward to that being fixed soon?

So anyway. Happy Larger Year Number Day. Here's to a brand new Arbitrary Compartmentalized Bunch of Time. May it bring you prosperity, fully charged batteries, and no fake intakes.