Iiiiiii'm the man in the box.

Joke #1 - International Correspondence Schools' least-responded ad: "Singing in Various Shapes, Lesson One - Cubes."

Joke #2 - A much earlier, and much less famous "Steely Dan" recording session.

Joke #3 - For the "differently talented" vocalist: the soundproof recording booth... also recording proof, and dignity proof.

Joke #4 - The ugly underbelly of the recording industry, where all too many eager young talents get their first paying "gig".

Joke #5 - From the banned first season of Hollywood Squares: Paul Lynd and his "musical personal massager"... an answer to a question no one asked.

Joke #6 - Behind the scenes in Consumer Reports' suit-testing chamber, measuring for a critical feature in Fifties America: squareness absorption.

Joke #7 - Jim J. Bullock's much-ignored album "Listening to my Pants".

Joke #8 - An early failure to create a tesseract in controlled conditions: the "square within a square", whose points can be described by the formula {(x,y,z,h): 0  x  1, 0  y  1, 0  z  1, 0  h  DORK}.

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

Chrysler Air Conditioning 1954 - Feels like a fridge. Looks like a fridge.

Recently, Jalopnik's informal daily reader survey, the "Question Of The Day" asked "What car colors need to make a comeback?" My response didn't make it into the top ten responses, but I am now surprised that turquoise didn't make it in either. I mean, paired with the white accents in this '54 Chrysler, it looks damn good. The effect is more impressive with all the shiny metal surfaces on the interior of the car.
See? Pretty. Could I live with it every day? Probably not, but just because I wouldn't buy a car this color doesn't mean I couldn't appreciate there being cars like this around. Car colors are stuck in a rut. Silver, champagne, black, white, with an occasional daring splash of dark blue or burgundy. There are exceptions to this chromatic vehicular dirge, but overall, the scenery on my daily commute is far too monotonous. I'm not helping, either. My car? Silver. Yawn. It was the one on the lot with the features I wanted, though.

Apart from the color of this Chrysler, the predominance of body-color surfaces inside the car is notable, as is the preponderance of hard metal surfaces, each of which are all too eager to bash your brains out. This was 1954, when building a safe car meant making a nice rigid box for you to bounce around in when you hit something good and solid. That steering column is a gorgeous piece of industrial design that will look just as pretty rammed through your chest. Fortunately, this will never happen, because the steering wheel will prevent it from sinking in too far, like the "basket" on the end of a ski pole. The woman in the ad will  have to settle for admiring the beauty of the steering column with her head stuck through the wheel. Let's not talk about her daughter.

How safe was this car? The ad doesn't tell us which of their cars was used for the picture, and I'm not enough of a vintage car buff to tell just by looking at the interior (although I think there may be some in the peanut gallery that can). In general, a modern car weighs roughly the same now as an equivalent model did way back in '54, thanks to heavy stuff like electronics and safety equipment. However, they're structured VERY differently. Your average Car of the Future is designed to crumple itself into a ball to dissipate a crash's energy, sacrificing itself to save your life. They didn't understand much about safety features in 1954.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rates vehicular fatalities on a number of scales, but a key number to look at is the number of deaths per hundred million miles traveled in cars by the population. This is the "fatalities per VMT" (Vehicular Miles Traveled). This is clever, because it controls for the greater number of cars on the road these days, which would otherwise make it hard to compare numbers.

So, how many people died per hundred million miles driven in 1954? Six.
How many deaths per VMT in 2009? One and a half.

Also, current cars have more "soft touch" surfaces inside, like rubberized plastic, foam, and fabric. This makes the interior more quiet and less echoey. A conversation in the '54 Chrysler would have been like talking in an oil barrel. However, one thing all those shiny metal surfaces have going for them is that it's really easy to clean them. Viscera wipes right off.

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Panasonic RE8080 - Mechless car audio, 1972 style.

I hate my car's head unit (radio). There's a USB plug in the armrest, so you can listen to MP3s stored on a flash drive. Fantastic. However, the radio's software randomly chooses to be unable to read the flash drive. Repeated attempts are generally fruitless until I power cycle the radio (turn the power off and on) by turning the whole car on and off. Then, chances are better it will read the MP3s. Having these arguments with my car's stereo is not handy while driving. How spoiled am I? Look what was new and exciting back in 1972.

We've reported on Panasonic's clunky, modular audio systems before. But this ad's in color! Presumably with the intent of saving you the expense of buying a tape transport mechanism for your car AND house, Panasonic hit upon the complicated idea of pulling your 8-track player out of your home stereo and shoving it into your car's dash. The amazing convenience being that you can continue listening to the tape from where you left off.

As with the other Panasonic stereo linked above in our older post, there was a separate adapter to carry around in case you wanted to listen to a cassette. Then there were the many cassettes to lug around. Good times.

In the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, car stereos were big ticket items, likely to be stolen if you left your car without an armed guard for a few minutes. Those days are kind of gone now. For one thing, factory radios have gotten better. Most people don't really have a great need to replace their car's original stereo. Good thing, too, because stereos are routinely combined with heating and ventilation controls, and buried behind stylized dashboard panels. Replacing a radio is not as simple as it once was. All of this makes radio theft not only harder, but also less worthwhile.

This will look great in my spaceship.

Even if you do choose to replace your car's head unit, you're likely to wind up with an overstyled thing that matches the rest of your car's interior about as well as a tennis shoe stuffed into the dash. Electronics manufacturers seem bent on capturing the snapperhead "fast & furious" segment of the market, to the exclusion of all those who want something that blends in with the rest of the instrumentation. There doesn't seem to be any company losing sleep over the problem of "stealthy" aftermarket car stereos. If they were really thinking, manufacturers would offer each model in your choice of face color and backlight color. Some stereos do allow you to adjust the backlighting color in infinite variety. However, there aren't many silver stereos, and that's a very common color found in cars. I don't know anybody with a shiny black dash board.

If I do replace my stereo, it'll probably be one of the "mechless" designs. These are basically a radio with no moving parts inside. It's an amplifier and tuner, into which you plug your various portable devices for content. This Panasonic stereo from 1972 is sort of mechless... when you pull the mechanism out to take it in the house to finish listening to The Captain & Tenille.

So, even with my intermittent USB problem, my car's iPod connector works just fine. I rarely use it, partly because my commute is often filled with podcasts played from a non-Apple device, but also because I don't like the hassle of fumbling around with the iPod cable in my arm rest. And yet, the fun of connecting and reconnecting stereo components is exactly what Panasonic is showcasing in this ad. I have something a million times better than this Panasonic stereo but I can't be bothered to plug in a cable. What a jerk.

My old car had an aftermarket stereo with Bluetooth streaming, so I could listen to music or podcasts magically sent through thin air from my phone to the car's head unit. I miss that. In a few years I'll probably look back on Bluetooth streaming as barbaric, because of the drudgery of pairing the phone with the stereo. "Ow, my pairing finger is all worn out!" I'll moan. What a baby. I already hate my spoiled, lazy future self.

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Good Morning, Electron Microscope!

Joke #1 - Mr. Curious electron microscope, for loads of rainy-day fun. $224,000.00. Available at Montgomery Ward, Kresge, and Kroger stores. Electrons sold separately.

Joke #2 - "Hm! Looks like your pregnant, Richard."

Joke #3 - "Well, if you haven't prepared the sample yet, then whose sperm ARE these?!?!?"

Joke #4 - "Let's see. The latest culture specimens are determined to be....'icky'. Really, professor. Was it worth saving six thousand dollars to go with the Fisher-Price microscope?"

Joke #45 was written by John Grizmond Thanks, John! - Dr. Rivers’ thrust her delicate cheek against his scan-hole, and Dial-Eyes blushed like a schoolboy. If only they could be alone!

Jokes 6 through 9 are on permanent loan from the satirical wing of the Jeremy Hornik Extra Classy Gallery of Humour. Thanks, Jeremy!-  

 

Joke #6 - Skynet’s first Terminator prototype barely hinted at the technical complexity to come.

Joke #7 - “Doctor, every time I use your new espresso-making invention, I could swear that I hear… sighing?”

Joke #8 - “OH… … … I… WAS… JUST… THINKING… YOU… AND… I… COULD… GO… GET… MALTEDS… … … SILLY… I… SUPPOSE…”

Joke #9 - “I know you know where ze rebels are, robot. You look guilty as fuck! Hit him again, Hans!”

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

Roblee Shoes - World's worst super b0wl party.

A certain segment of the American population would love to roll back the clock to the fifties, when gay people and racial minorities were just as much a part of our society, but easier to ignore. Aah, to have our country somehow transported back to the good old days, when everyone in mainstream America was a Pat Boone replicant. Good thing it's impossible. Apart from bigotry and hatred thinly disguised as piety, there's another reason this is a terrible idea. Fifties tech was terrible. Behold, the world's worst super b0wl party!

This ad is only concerned with shoes. Everything else is just decoration. So, it's mean to poke fun at this picture, knowing that it's not supposed to be a representation of reality, right?

Right! Let's begin. A 12" portable black and white TV set roughly similar to the one in this ad cost around $150 at the time. If the inflation calculator is to be believed, that's $1148 in current Future Money. You get a lot of TV for eleven hundred bucks now. ABT (A nice electronics specialty showroom in Chicago's Northern suburbs that's several steps above Best Buy) offers this Samsung 46" LED backlit LCD TV for almost exactly the same price, minus the annoying $200 mail-in rebate.

But apart from the sheer titchyness of the TV set itself, it's on a shelf eight inches above the floor. "Shew! Glad we put in that eight inch shelf! I was tired of bending all the way down to the floor to watch TV! My back is slightly less strained!" I think their TV shelf needs to be put on a higher shelf.

There are two "foot stools" in the picture too. Who makes six inch tall foot stools? At that height, you may as well just put your feet up on the dog. Snacks are a child-size bowl of pretzels. Hey big spender. "Thanks for inviting me over for your weak-ass superbowl party, Ron. I'm glad I turned down the invitation to the Elks lodge party for this. I hate you."

All of this, of course, is needed to keep the set decorations plausibly close to the floor, where the all-important shoes live. It must be hard being a photographer called in for a shoe ad. Nothing you try looks normal. You have to make it stupid to get the job done. But then that's advertising for you. Check your brain at the door, please.

Note: The word "super b0wl" is trademarked by the En Eff El, and thanks to their lawyers, no media can use the term, except for news reporting. The acronym for the organization is also verboten. I don't even care about football and this annoys me. Apparently our super advanced Future Lawyer Technology is running amok, ruining society. Why can't a dystopian future society ever be any fun to live in, like in the movies?

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Schlitzquerade Party - Schlitz you, Schlitz Brewing Company. You Schlitzholes.

It seems like forever that advertisers have been trying to get us to change the way we talk, to support their ad campaigns. There used to be a local radio commercial, here in Chicago, for a car dealer. I can't remember the name of the dealer, thankfully. They were so juiced about their customer service that they wanted you to call their cars by the dealer name, not the manufacturer. The horrible actors in the commercial said things like...

-"Hey Bill! Nice Oldsmobile! Is it new?
-"It sure is, Todd! ...but it's not an Oldsmobile, it's a Wanker! So, don't call it an Oldsmobile any more. Wanker Oldsmobile's customer service is so great that their cars aren't just Oldsmobiles. They're Wankers. Call my car a Wanker from now on, or I'll punch you in the nuts. Visit Wanker Oldmobile in Bensenville, on grand Avenue, just under the flight patterns of O'Hare Airport! Just remember to keep your head down as you sprint in the door."

In this dramatization, I have substituted the forgotten dealership's name with "Wanker". But, it could easily be Grossinger, Jacobs, Celozzi-Ettelson, Packey-Webb, McGrath, Rohrman or whatever. Those are some dealerships I can think of.

Eff you, Wanker Oldsmobile. Your retarded and presumptuous commercial is so annoying, I'll be sure to buy my next car from anyone but you, you jagoffs. Enjoy the zero dollars and zero cents you won't be getting from me next time I need a car.

Anyway, this Schiltz ad is hoping for the same thing. They want us to tack on the prefix Schlitz to every third word you use. Your party will need some Schlitzfreshment. Better stock up on ice cold Schlitz.

The artwork here is great, though. It kind of looks like the cartoons you could see on the Disney show on Sunday nights. I'm pretty sure that stuff was produced in the late fifties and sixties, but I remember it from the Seventies, on ABC. The Wonderful World of Disney never ran their features, but you could find all their short-form stuff, like documentaries about nature, and Jiminy Cricket shorts. Or, maybe it was the artwork in the Disney Golden Books I'm remembering?

There is no credit for the artist who did the work in this ad. Nertz. I also tried to find a recording of the jingle in this ad. I figured it was used in a commercial of some kind, but FaceTube came up empty handed. However, I was able to find another of those jerks selling an ad similar to this one for nine bucks. Nine dollars for a page from a magazine. Such a deal. Save yourself about a hundred dollars and just buy the whole magazine for about $6, from an antique store.

I've never had a Schlitz, but I reckon it tastes like beer. I don't know how good it would have to be for me to go all Smurfy with the "schlitz" prefix. I imagine that if I did become "the guy who says Schlitz all the time", my next "Shlitzdig" would pretty much be me, sitting on the couch, wondering when all my friends were going to start showing up. For your convenience, here's the list of words the Schlitz brewing Company would like you to start using in 1957...

-Schlitzquerade
-Schlitzfreshment
-Schlitzball
-Prince Schlitzcharming
-Little Bo Schlitzpeep
-Schlitzlight
-Schlitdig
-Schlitzer
-Schlitzkept
-Schlitzness

UPDATE: Why do the cowboy and the lady in the purple dress appear twice in this ad?

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Little Ads - Cut, blow, talk, huh?

Hand ground, razor sharp blades. Tenite II handles are unbreakable and fire resistant. May also be held in correct way.

Will go thru 1/4" plywood. Comes with 5/8" plywood protective jumpsuit and helmet.

Develop a he-man voice. Work from home, possibly in bed.

Also see our offer for free book "How to Send for Free Book".