Overhead Garage Doors - Sally's Hard Day

Hm. This needs a caption. But Jeez, the possibilities are endless. Screw it. I'll do all of them.
Caption 1. "It was a hard day at the office. Firing workers is always stressful, but Sally couldn't have the unions coming into her factory, telling her how to run her own tobacco company. The rabble rousers got what they deserved. Fortunately, her new garage door practically opens with one finger. One less thing to worry about."

Caption 2. "Would daddy like him? Would they get along okay? Would daddy think less of her? Sally's hand trembled as she opened the door to the garage where she kept her boyfriend."

Caption 3. "I'm ashamed at you, Sally. What kind of parallel parking was that? And do you even know where the turn signal is? You know what? I think you can open the garage door your own damn self today."

Caption 4. "Daddy slowly rose from the engine compartment, moving carefully, checking to see if she was looking. Sally was opening the garage, and her back was turned. Perfect! This was going to be the best surprise party ever."

Caption 5. "Daddy was waiting. She had to time this perfectly or he'd have a chance to scream and that would bring the neighbors over. The garage door had just gotten new springs the day before. That was good, because she needed to get the door open fast and dive out of the way. She hoped the bear was awake."

Caption 6. "Golly, what a long day. Two mergers and a sexual harassment suit from that prick she should have fired a year ago. Sally just wanted to put her feet up and have a bourbon. But daddy showed up before she even had a chance to get the car in the garage. 'What's for dinner honey?' he beamed. Good thing she kept a shovel just inside the door."

Pontiac Grand Prix - Eat Your Quaker Oats

This is just a really nice painting. I can't stand modern pontiacs. Overdesigned, underengineered, cheesy and cheap is how I'd describe them. Product managers spend all the money on the motor and cut every possible corner on the rest of the vehicle. This one's pretty, though, and even prettier in this mixed media rendering.

It's a full page ad from 1961. Click on the image to see/save it in really high reolution.It looks like watercolor or Dr. Martin's inks with maybe guache painted on top. I dunno. Technique can make these things hard to call.

By 1961, auto makers had recovered from the juvenile whale tail craze of the fifties, when cars had silly shark fins on the back. Also, the chrome bumpers that looked like brassieres were mercifully finished. Straight, clean lines were in fashion and I think these made cars look more grown up and less goofy.

To show that nothing goes away forever, cars now seem to be returning to a hysterical over-designed style, with creases and criss-crossing character lines all over the place. Gives me a headache looking at them.

Anyway, I didn't think I'd have a joke to make about this picture, but guess what? Wilford Brimley seems to be talking to the young owners of the car, probably about oatmeal. "I know you two kids think your new automobile is the bees knees, but that doesn't mean you can neglect your health. Take this free packet of Quaker Oatmeal on your journey, won't you?"

The youg couple reject Wilford's offer, calling him a "square", doing that thing in the air with their fingers that makes a square. Wilford becomes enraged, his chest cavity opening like a large vertical mouth, and engulfs the young man's head. The wife stares, too shocked to scream, even as arterial spray dots her sunny yellow dress. Just as she draws breath, tentacles from Wilfred's mouth loop around her throat, cutting off her cry before it happens, and she is lifted off her feet by the creature that has was two men but is now one. Her legs wave in the air spasmodically, and their combined throats scream its alien rage, a strange, wheezing groan. Sungold Metallic paint was fifty dollars extra for the model year.

Man, that was a great movie.

Smith Corona - Microsoft word, Ver. Minus44

Copy and paste, undo, fonts, formatting, etc. It's easy to list the things we can't live without that are all things this thing can't do. Don't care. I love this thing, and I'm not just being a grumpy luddite.
Undo, and all the rest, are things that I agree we can't live without. I can't either. That's why it's called progress. But when was the last time you typed on a fossilized machine like this? They feel great. When the keyboard was integral to the mahcine itself, much more engineering effort was put into the feel of the keyboard. If the keyboard failed, the whole mahcine was dead, so better switches were used underneath every key. The whole thing feels more solid and smooth. Of course, the whole machine eighed as much as your desktop computer, but meh, so what?

Currently, your keyboard costs about twenty dollars and is kind of disposable. And, if you ask me, it feels that way. It feels like thin plastic with silicone domes under each key. Yes, this makes the action very light and silent, but each key has a lateral wobble that doesn't lend my fingers any confidence. Old typewriters and to some extent, old keyboards (more on that in a minute), work on a mechanism with metal springs and mechanical switches. The feel is much more solid, smooth, and can still have a light action.

The popularity of retro-looking, but otherwise completely modern, products should indicate that there's a market for more. The new Camaro and Mini Cooper show us that people like modern engineering with classic styling. I'd pay a little extra for a super fast computer with a case and keyboard like this Smith-Corona. I'd love a two tone mint green computer with clicky cylinder keys. The closest I have come, short of doing some custom frankenstein case mod, is my IBM Model M keyboard. You can get one of your own if you're weird like me. My keybaord is from 1995, the tail end of the beige era in personal computer design. I think there's a crying need for something that looks like 1964, but works like 2009.

Magnavox - Children, Obey HypnoClown.

Wendy and Eggbert stared, feared and continued to stare. HypnoClown seemed to see them right thruogh the glass of their spectacular 400 square inch screen. Their hearts quivered. It seemd like days since they had felt  two evenly spaced  heartbeats. Blood barely crawled through their little veins. Jaws slackened, and a thin filament of spittle shivered in their otherwise imperceptible breath.

HypnoClown would tell them when to breathe again. HypnoClown would reveal the wisdom of their next heartbeat only when they were worthy. An age passed and they fell into the inky depths of his loving eyes. They fell for days it seemed and still they continued to fall. No bottom to those knowing, understanding eyes.

Surely HypnoClown would reach for them. His fingers would inevitably grasp the edges of the screen and he would step beyond the bounds of the Provincial Fruitwood cabinet, and then he would be with them, possibly forever. Then HypnoClown would preotect Wendy and Eggbert from mother and father. Protect them from the cold light of day. Protect them from the terrifying agony of ever making a decision again. HypnoClown would decide what was best for them. Wendy and Eggbert would simply live forever in the warm, loving mind of HypnoClown. Then everything would be okay forever. All they had to do was... just.. let...go.

Winston - Kind of Tacky, Even for a Tobacco Company

Yes, the sixties were swinging. They swung hard (swang?). Still, this ad for Winston cigarettes... wow.
Really? A penis joke? Just like all innuendo, it's totally implied, but totally blatant at the same time. Granted, there's not that many ways to convince someone to buy cigarettes, so ideas for ads must be hard to come by.

What's the relationship between the two people? Does she know him? Are they dating? Married? He looks old enough to maybe be her father, which would make the wiener joke really creepy. Is there even a wiener joke? She sure looks as though she's comparing the cigarette favorably to the man's junk. Meanwhile, he's happy to shovel the walk for her. "Hi Honey! Look! I'm shoveling!" He can't see what she's doing with her hands, so he doesn't know she's humiliating him in front of a photographer, the photographer's assistant, the lighting guy, and reps from the the advertising company and R.J. Reynolds. To be sure, magazine readers almost never think this hard about ads, but you can bet that the ad execs though long and hard about it when they designed it.

It's interesting to think that this ad ran in 1962, only a few years into the sexual revolution. Just ten years earlier, you'd never have seen an ad like this, with a cheeky, even disrespectful woman so prominent.

So what's going on in this ad? No idea. Does it make me want to start smoking? Nope. But I kind of want to see what that girl does with the cigarette in a few minutes.

Kodak - Rejoice, We Are Spoilt

Christmas, 1961. A camera under the tree. "Weeeeee!" goes little Rufus. "Weeeeee!" goes little Agda. "Weeeeee! Why'd we give our kids weird names?" goes mom. "It was your idea. This marriage is a lie! Weeeeee!" goes dad.

Not to put too fine a point on it, your mobile phone can do 90% of what this family wanted this camera to do for them. Your pocket-sized point & shoot can do 90% of what all the stuff on the right could do. Maybe 92%. This is definitely great. All this capability owes it's existence to these guys, who just won the Nobel Prize for inventing the CCD chip that has made basically every non-filmy camera technology possible.

Look how cool all those cameras are. All boxy and chunky. In some way or another, each resembles the front of a semi truck. Hilarious and great. So, in a way, it's kind of sad that the era of this stuff is now gone. You can find really good film cameras in antique stores for not much money at all, maybe 15-50 dollars, even for a European brand. They are tempting, but I'd only be buying it to worship the engineering. As always, all of these images can be clicked and viewed at insanely high resolution.

Lastly, look at the plug for Disney's TV show "The Wonderful World of Color". BAH hah hah! That's adorable. Color was still enough of a thrilling novelty that they put it in the name of the show.

Jeez. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll have to get an old film camera. You know.. just to worship the engineering of it.

Radio Facial - You look prettier when you take it off.

One of the priveleges we enjoy as Dwellers in the Future is the easy dismissal of errant scientific claims made in the past. Some technological discoveries are made purely by chance, which leads me to wonder how long it would have taken us to arrive at the same conclusion by pure experimentation and logic. Vulcanized rubber springs to mind. So much for me trying to be fair and objective. This is friggin retarded.
Based on the scientific principal of "if people don't understand stuff, you can sell anything to them", the Short-Wave Helmet was alleged to have "beneficial effects" on the skin. Maybe the inventor had more specific information that didn't fit in the allotted space of rthe article? I dunno. I think that in Popular Mechanics, readers expect some explanation of how things work. When being shown something as clearly insnae as this helmet, most people would need to be convinced that they want to go through the serious weirdness of wearing the thing.

Apparently, the mask uses ultra short wave radio frequencies to make your skin better. Even the model in the photo looks skeptical. She looks like she's going to punch Nurse Funkenstein "You are NOT putting that thing on me." "Ooooh yes you are." the nurse replies. "You've been very naughty in the eyes of the Lord, doncha know. In this photo, we can almost see your knees, you little Jezebel!"

That was 1940. If the  thing actually worked, people would be using it. If it's a goofy footnote in Popular Mechanics from 69 years ago, it must be crap. "Ho ho ho." We all laugh while stroking our wise beards. We in The Future are far to smart to be bamboozled by shenanigans like that." Nah. Examples: Herbal supplements, accupuncture, homeopathy, kinoki foot pads, HD sunglasses, magnetic healing, copper bracelets. Ignorance and gullibility have no season.