Reckless Pickup - We're on a hiiiiiigh-way to hick.

Joke #1 - "Oh dear god! I'm in ALABAMA!!!"

Joke #2 - "Gasp! The Varmint Gang! ...and my wife is in that oil drum! This is terrible! She should be in the crate! The oil fumes will give her a headache!"

Joke #3 - "Gosh dangit! Those crafty Jebb boys got there before me. I wanted to be the one to take Count A out for his birthday."

Joke #4 - "Bessie! Where are you going with that strange man behind your wheel? Bessiieeeeeee!"

Joke #5 - There was no time for signaling or braking. Nothing stood in the way when there was a delivery from Crate & Barrel on the way.

Joke #6 - Roger was furious. He specifically instructed the UPS driver to leave it at the door if he wasn't home. Now he had to go down to the depot and pick up his Real Doll in person. Maybe he could get the reverend to do it for him? He DID owe Roger a favor, after he hid those bodies for him.

Joke #7 - "Holy smokes! That's old Joe, driving drunk! He'd better be careful. Cornering that hard will put excessive wear on the truck's ball joints and will lead to excessive maintenance costs!"

Incoming joke from Craig! #8 - Coming in September: Young Dukes of Hazzard
Synopsis: Jesse Duke and Cooter prevent a young Jefferson Davis "J.D." Hogg from running a traffic scheme in which a hair dryer is used in place of a radar gun, forcing Ernest Tubb to work off his fine at the Boar's Nest. Hilarity ensues. 

Formfit Lingerie - Killing time.

You have to pity the underwear industry. How do you show a product shot that doesn't look as though people forgot to dress? After a few decades, you'd run out of excuses to show happy, beautiful people standing around in their underwear. Not so in the Fifties! In swinging 1952, people would get together in their underwear and play solitaire, Alone.

Formfit made you look so good you just had to take your clothes off and sit in a darkened room and play cards. That's what I do whenever I'm bursting with confidence and self-worth. Well, it's what I plan to do if I ever burst with confidence and self worth. Fingers crossed.

Maybe she's waiting for her date to show up? Maybe she's waiting for her husband to finish getting ready to go -BAH HAH hah hah hah hah. No, I can't even type it with a straight face. Sorry. I tried.

Say you're an art director working on a Formfit campaign. Hpw do you portray people in their underwear in a flattering way that doesn't also look absurd? I'd say the hell with it and just pretend nobody wears clothes in ad-land. People standing in line at the bus station in their underwear. League night at the bowling alley in their underwear. Some battles are so stupid, they're not worth fighting. But, not everyone lives in the cartoon world inside my head (...yet. Patience. Patience).

So Formfit shows a young woman playing solitaire in her "blissfully comfy" fabric tube. I guess the message is that she's so comfortable, she's happy to hang out in her Formfit products. Also with earrings and a bracelet. Oh yeah, and makeup. With her hair done. It's almost as if she's going to pose for a painting.

A painting by whom? Well, the work is uncredited, as are the other examples of this ad campaign I can find. Just by looking, I'd say this could easily be the work of Gil Elvgren. He's my favorite of the pinup artists of the fifties. His stuff had that loose-and-brushy-but-still-realistic look that makes me so jealous I could punch a baby. I would imagine that, if he were to do a job like this, the client may ask him to tighten up the brush work. The brushy look isn't for everyone, and he had the range to work loose or tight. I have a book to prove it. For those of you not in the know, these pinup guys didn't just paint stuff like this out of their heads. They took carefully posed photographs and used it as "reference". This is what we in the biz call "heavily photo referenced". The fact that Elvgren (or whoever) used photo ref detracts not at all from his skill, but someone who could produce work of this quality out of thin air would be a demigod, and deserving of infinite hatred.

Was the original painting in color? I have no proof, but I'd imagine so. Number one, it would give the client the option to run the ad in full color at a later date if they felt like it without new art. Number two, believe it or not, painting a person in black and white isn't any easier or quicker than color. I guess there may be artists who specialize in black and white oil paintings but they probably don't have any friends. If you DID want to do a B/W portrait, you'd probably use a B/W photo as your reference. Doing the translation from color to grey in your head could be a pain. With a pencil sketch, you're only putting down varying intensities of black on white paper, but with an oil painting you'd be constantly mixing new shades of gray to make the flesh tones. It's possible I guess, but it seems weird. Just paint in color, okay? Jeez!

If you're so enamored of these ads, you can do an Ebay search and find plenty of examples. Expect to pay about ten dollars for an ad clipping, which is a rip off. Alternately, you can buy a whole magazine for less than that at an antique mall. Then you can sit on your bed in your super-comfy underwear and leaf through it.

Antiques Creepshow - Peasant under glass.

Today we're going to explore the "extra valued" items in the glass case at the antique store, while my girlfriend looks at vintage jewelry. Whatever we find, you can bet it will be super rare and slightly priceless, because you can't touch them. Excited? Me neither! Oooh, I wish the anticipation were killing me!

Aha! A rare Hummel! Some of you may recall that Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel was not only fascinated by adorable vignettes featuring round headed waifs, but she also had a deep passion for great battles of the past. This piece was produced in a run of 200 in 1943, and  is entitled "Tummy Whoopsie". It shows a good Christian soldier disemboweling an evil non-Christian soldier, dispatching him with Christian love and mercy. It shows us how much God loves us. Well, some of us at least. Note the anguish on the Christian soldier's face. He can't even bring himself to look at what he must do for the greater glory of God. What a trooper. Onward Christian soldier!

When I was a lad, I asked for a Bottom Dump like this for Christmas. I won't describe what I got. The road to the gastroenterologist is paved with good intentions, as they say.

Even this deer can't believe how badly he's painted. He's rolling his yellow cartoon eyes in disgust. Ask anyone "What color are lips?" and they'll tell you "Why, lips are red, you jackass." So, the deer got bright red lips. The artist didn't need to look at nature to understand nature. Everything he needed to know was in his heart. Trees are always green. Lips are always red. Antlers always grow out of two asymmetrical tumors on the skull. If this deer could, he'd clean himself and mount his head on the wall.

This Beatles figurine is mislabeled as Paul McCartney. It is actually a very rare figurine of Jim Carrey. It's an easy enough mistake to make, especially once you've put a wig on the figure and hung a little guitar around it's neck and tagged it as Paul McCartney. Completely understandable. See?

See? Spitting image! Or, trying really hard to spit, maybe.

Smirnoff - Dictating fashion.

The sixties were an exciting time (I'm told). Some kind of cultural revolution or whatever. Bacteria-sharing sexual liberation called "swinging". Nutty clothes. I'd enjoy a stiff drink too. (Sidebar: One huge plus to living in 1968... the coolest race cars in history).

So who can blame Smirnoff for riding the wave of kookiness by landing a deal with Austrian fashion commandant Rudi Gernreich? Who-ey Gern-who?Yeah, I know. I had to look him up, too. He was born in Austria and fled to the U.S. in 1938 because of Those Darn Nazis. Gernreich was initally a dancer, getting into fashion through fabric design. It sounds like life under the Third Reich would have been kind of rough for him. So, 10 out of 10 for good thinking goes to Gernreich.

In space, no one can hear you fabulous.

Gernreich does deserve some credit for designing the costumes for Space 1999, my favorite vision of the squeaky clean vaccu-formed future that will never exist (along with the first 30 minutes of Star Wars).

Finally allowing his freak flag it's brithright of free flight, he designed whan I'm going to call "art clothes". These are clothes that aren't meant to be worn or functional in any way, but rather are intended to be worn for sixty seconds at a fashion show and then laughed at forty years later. Such clothes are popular among wankers fashion designers and people who worship fashion designers, and nobody else.

Well, almost nobody else. Can it be a coincidence that Gernreich, professional fashion fop, not only designed the kind of highly recyclable aluminized fashions that World's Ugliest Woman and total Dick-Tater Muammar Gaddafi prefers, but also slightly kind of really looks like him a lot in this ad?

Why does the harmless twin always die first?

Yep. Coincidence. They were alive at the same time. Gernreich died in 1985. So no, they're not the same person, but Gaddafi got all his hand-me-downs. Either they were brothers or Gaddafi was first in line at the Gernreich estate sale.

Art clothes make up the subject matter of  75% of the programming on Bravo, the alternative lifestyle network. The popularity of such shows as Maximum Fashion Slap-Fight and Argumentative Panzy Battle stand in stark contrast to the negligible relevance of clothes that look like lamp shades. There are still loads of people trying to out-ridiculous each other's fashions, but they're important only to each other.

As futuristic as Gernreich was trying to be, here we are in the future and nobody wears metallic fedoras. Jeans are still the pants of favor, and the one creature that does wear purple curtains is currently worth about a quarter in the global death pool.

Kooking Kornir - Expanded Meat Foam Extrusion Sandwich.

Today, let's make a lunch to satisfy the appetite of your brawniest lumberjack or other homo-erotic stereotype! Build your viking an expanded meat foam extrusion sandwich! He'll be deconstructing it for days!

Begin by pulverizing two pounds of animal meat. Distill the meat slurry into a monomer using the enzyme of your choice. (For some great articles on this season's most popular enzymes, see the article in last month's Better Homes "Enzymes, Copolymers and the Hungry Family).

Allow the resulting monomer to oxidize overnight in a vacuum chamber, forming a jelly (meat-a-styroloxyd). Morning is the time to mix in the pickle fragments and seasoning before long carbon chains can form. We always like a little horse radish and cumin, but always trust your taste!

Mix in 1/2 cup of Kraft hydrocarbon expanding agent. Keep cool until you're ready for the extrusion procedure. Pour the oxyd into a holding vessel and prepare your extrusion apparatus. Choose a die in the approximate shape of a slice of bread. Why? Don't forget, you're making a sandwich! Adjust the extrusion pressure to 75 psi for beef. Working with pork? 50psi should do the trick! Vole requires much less pressure (15psi) or the mixture will atomize, wrecking your lunch and necessitating evacuation in a 300 yard perimeter.

Pour the meat oxyd into the extruder and set the steam temperature to 200 degrees. This will cause the expanding agent to boil, softening the meat and causing it to expand. Timing is critical at this stage. Using the pressure described above, force the expanding meat through the die. The meat foam should expand and polymerize as it emerges from the die, assuming the delicious shape of your lunch. Allow to cool and stabilize. Don't stomp or it will fall! Stare with caution.

Slice and serve between two slices of brown. Our serving suggestion is flanked by tomato microcubes and lettuce. Also put some mustard.

Lunch construction complete! Consume!

Donna and Walter - Love in the weeds.

Joke #1 - "So! Donna! I knew I'd find you here! ...but I didn't know you'd be with the same tree that stole my virginity, too."

Joke #2 - "Oh, Walter, it's just not going to work. We're from two different worlds. I'm only nine feet tall, and the rules of perspective indicate that you must be at least fifteen feet tall...or maybe standing in a shopping cart..."

Joke #3 - "Donna! What a pleasant surprise! You know, this is just how we had our first kiss, remember? I had gone into the woods to urinate, and I found you holding a flower..."

Joke #4 - "Oh, Walter. This day is perfect. So enchanting. You and me, together in the Cook County forest preserve. And look! We've just found the first murder victim of spring together!"

Joke #5 - "You know, Donna, there's something I've been wanting to ask you. That's why I've crept up behind you in the forest on one knee.

Joke #6 - "Oh, Walter, it's just not going got work. We're from two different worlds. You like underbrush, but I like foliage. You see? Please try to understand."

Joke #7 comes from Craig Craigson. Thanks Craig! "Donna thought Walter loved her only for her body, but it was her sweater he lusted for. "

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

Borden's Products - Elmer begins.

So here's another ad featuring Borden's monstrous cow-human. This time Elmer is flying solo. It's about the same age as the other Borden's ads we've posted, but you'd think it was conceived before the other ads, because Borden hadn't elaborated on the concept of their cow mascot into a whole family of freaks just yet. But nope. Same age.

Here's Elmer teaching us all about the other great products made by Borden. You know, the dairy guys? Well, apparently running a diary corporation didn't keep them busy enough, and one day a guy says "I have a great idea for a hose". Is it really that surprising that a company whose success was built on cows decided to produce fertilizer along the way?

Well, it was Borden's other endeavors that led to the disfigurement of Elmer, due to a face full of pressurized acid. It was probably a chemical used in the production of vinyl for Borden's line of garden hoses. Elmer's face was melted, running down his neck to form the strange labial mess we see in this picture.

It reflects well on the Borden corporation that they let him keep his job as corporate spokesmonster. Perhaps it was an attempt to persuade him not to press charges? Maybe the marketing people thought it made him seem more "real"? Maybe Elmer was just that good at selling. A real pro.

P.S. Can we assume that the fertilizer spreader is full of Elmer's dumps? I mean, why would a cow buy fertilizer?