Savory Oil - Slick 'em up.

Joke #1 - "No, BOTH arms, you mug!. ...and no sudden moves or I'll savorize you."

Joke #2 - "Please take it easy, sir. Just take my wallet and go. Think of my daughter. What kind of life would she have with no father, or maybe with a father covered in some kind of presumably delicious oil?"

Joke #3 - Once again, an innocent citizen of Binghamton, NY is robbed at nozzlepoint by the Goody Yum Yum Gang, threatening to spray him with Savory Oil. The police were powerless to help, as were the town dog and little girl.

Joke #4 - "..but I'll tell you one thing, jerk. This is one hoser who ain't takin' off, see?"

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

Joke #5 comes from Craig Craigson: "And you'll see by looking around, Mr. Savory, that this part of Binghamton is what we call "Oilguytown," as every house in the neighborhood is home to an oil guy. You'll fit right in, I'm sure. 

Just be aware that the homeowner association requires your shitty, smelly truck to be parked in front of your house every night."

Antiques Creepshow - Malevolent Molly.

To brighten your weekend, please leave this post up on your monitor: the hateful glare of this bride-of-Chucky type doll will fill you with some kind of emotion... probably the emotion of closing the browser.

This doll was spotted and photographed by our Antique Store Safari Team, with only two members of the expedition being sent for a brief stay in the "nervous hospital" as a result. Considering the pure evil exuded by this doll, losses were expected, and only two downed associates was not as bad a result as we had feared.

The asking price was not visible, but a shred of the buyer's soul would surely figure into the negotiations. Just like Mr. Marbles tortured the mind of Jerry Seinfeld, this little plastic girl is the kind of thing you could expect to find standing on your chest in the middle of the night, having shouted yourself awake from a nightmare. She'd just be staring and staring  into your eyes.

Enjoy the weekend, children.

Ford Rotunda - The five bridges sweeeet.

Time is short today, due to required attendance at the P.A.G. Mid-Early Spring Tetherball Tournament (MESTT), over in GO! Plaza. SO, here's a quick postcard that's to cool to make fun of. The Ford Rotunda at the '64 World's Fair.

I don't know how many of those pretzel-shaped bridges there are hanging off this building, but it looks like two, which is close enough to five to allow me to use the name of the 1970 album by The Nice for the title of this post.

Yes, the building is super beautiful, but look what's in those Habitrail (tm) bridge things. Cars are in there! The crop at the end of the post will be a closeup view of the bridges. Man, I wish I could find some kind of DVD film of the 64 fair. Maybe I'll check Amazon...

Once again, any mention of the '64 World's Fair reminds me of the They Might Be Giants song Ana Ng. "All alone at the '64 World's Fair. Eighty dolls yelling 'small girl after all'. Who was at the DuPont pavilion? Why was the bench still warm? Who had been there?" Me and my friend used to do that song in the coffee house back in college.

Zenith UHF Television - Let the cartoons begin.

So maybe your parents are complaining about "that new television thing that means my old TV won't work any more". Maybe they're behaving as if nothing like this has ever happened before. Well, if they're old enough, they should be able to remember going through the horrors of technological advancement before. If they're REALLY old enough, they may have trouble remembering things in general. P.A.G. has reported in the past about the early days of color television and how people were worried their TVs would explode or cease to exist or whatever. That also happened in 1949 when UHF broadcast frequencies promised to bring a new world of reruns and cartoons into your home (eventually). Thankfully, Zenith was ready.

I guess the tuner in the TV had to be designed to accept frequencies above the previous ceiling of (I think ) 300 MHz. The Wikipedia article gets super geeky and I don't have a degree in that kind of geekery, so a quick skim of the information will have to do. Also, I have to give a squash lesson in thirty minutes.

The benefit of broadening the frequency spectrum of television broadcasts opened up room for more channels, which people probably wanted. It wouldn't be necessity keep old TVs from working, but in order to get the new UHF channels on your old VHF, you'd have to buy a converter. Sound familiar?

Zenith sounds pretty cranked about their "Giant Circle Screen", which seems horrible at first, but when I think about it, a circle may be more like the natural field of human vision. I mean, my eyeballs' view of the world sure isn't a 16:9 rectangle. but that's what I'm used to. Considering the shape of each eye's field of view, and the overlap in the middle for stereoscopic vision, it's probably more like a squashed oval. So, this goofy circle makes as much sense as anything, I suppose, even though it's clearly a stupid idea. It's all a matter of the resolution and whether the Giant Circle is a cropped version of a rectangle or vice versa.

All of this stuff is tricky for my giant future-brain to understand. Pity the poor troglodytes of 1949 trying to grasp the reason their old TV won't get the new channels.

What I recall of my kidhood was that, for some reason the shitty black and white TV in the kitchen got the UHF channels better than channels 2 and 5. This was fine with me, because UHF was home to channels 32 and 44. Ch. 32 later became Field Communications and even later, FOX. Channel 44 went "en espanol" some time in the early eighties I think. But before that happened, Channel 32 was where you could go to catch Popeye, Woody Woodpecker and Tom & Jerry on Super Cartoon Sunrise, and the various horrible Hanna Barbera shows in the afternoon. UHF was where I saw my first Anime, in the form of Speed Racer (original name: Mach Go Go Go), Battle of the Planets (original name: Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), Space Giants (original name: Ambassador Magma)  and Ultraman (original name: Urutoraman). Also, channel 44 ran the reliably freaky Spider-Man cartoon, as animated by the reliably stoned Ralph Bakshi.


Now these shows are available in various easily accessed forms like DVD and YouTube, which is better I guess. I'd like to buy a DVD of these shows with atmospheric interference and static in the picture. Better still, I can just get the DVDs and watch them through a horrible old TV. Hmm. Food for thought.

Keio Plaza Inter-Continental Hotel - Enjoy your stay, Mr. Bond / Lee

Because I'm an ignorant American who only knows the world through the lens of the entertainment industry, when I look at this postcard, it look like either a scene from a Bond movie or a Bruce Lee movie. And because I like Bruce Lee movies and Bond movies, I'm okay with that.

The Keio Plaza Inter-Continental Hotel. How many yowling kung-fu battles must have taken place in that lobby? How many creative deaths occurred in the hotel spa at the hands of a cheeky MI-6 agent? I know: none. But those things should have happened, and they would have been great.

Aah, but there does seem to be some skullduggery afoot. Look at the couple in the forground. It seems that a young Debra Jo Rupp and her half-Japanese companion are sneaking out of the hotel with a set of curtains cleverly made into a suit. Also, they've stolen a typewriter. You're fooling no one, Rupp party of two.

In the distance, we see a young toreador on his first trip to the west, hoping to fight those big American bulls he's heard about back in his home town of Salamanca. Too bad he wound up in Tokyo.

So is the Keio Plaza Inter-Continental Hotel still there? Sure thing! At least, their website seems convinced the hotel exists. It looks like they've redone the lobby in the last forty years, though. I wonder if they want their post card back. They can ask really nicely if it's that important to them.

Just for good measure, here's the location in Google maps, in case you're hoping to pop down there for lunch today.


View Larger Map

Arrow Underwear - Riding high.

I suppose it's unfair to pick on the past for being a bunch of squares. Squareness is practically synonymous with anachronism. That being said, it's time to pick on the past for being a bunch of squares. Snort! Nice underpants, 1954! Stupid past, you stupid square!

This ad is obviously designed to grab attention because of the kooky picture of the man skiing in his underwear. Pretty racy stuff for the Leave it to Beaver era. (Actually, it looks like the guy is standing flat on the floor with the camera tilted to look like he's going down hill, but who cares?) The expression on his face tells us the picture is supposed to be funny. Sure, fine.

I knew the fifties were pretty square, but wow. When I first looked at these elaborate and "thorough" designs, I was reminded of the "special underwear" the Mormons have to wear.

What's that? you don't know about the Mormons' special underwear? Well, in order for the Mormons to remind themselves that Joseph Smith found inscribed golden plates that nobody else was ever allowed to see (because he hid them in a hat), and that only he could translate into a Bible that said he could have as many wives as he wanted, they have to wear special underwear that looks like this:

Yep. Mormons really know how to party.

The Mormon male underwear is the only undergarment in history to combine the conservatism of the long john with the decadence of the "banana hammock". Yet, the design still manages to convey a definite message of "You can't touch this."

So, now that I actually look at the Magic Mormon Underwear, the shorts in the Arrow ad look positively naughty. See? If you want to make 1954 look positively swingin', you just have to find the right comparison. It's all in how you sell it. To fight for the title of Knerdiest Knickers, Arrow could just change up the product descriptions, like so:

You're welcome, 1954.

Better Homes - Cake floss.

Joke #1 - In this month's Better Homes: make use of home improvement waste material and save money when you make our spring "Carpet Cake".

Joke #2 - Also in this month's must-have issue: Better Homes asks the tough questions. Is it still vegetarian if your cake is made from Muppets?

Joke #3 - Better homes shows you how: Welcome spring with our fun-to-wear, fun-to-eat Easter cakehat!

Joke #4 is from Sue. Thanks, Sue! Betty and Sally just didn't get the concept of what a cheesecake really was. But, as they would learn thru their lives - blond hair, flowers and a big grin would be their best defense against criticism.