Du Pont Dacron Suits - Just 45% wool. 100% worsted.

More cultural high points from The Seventies, everybody's favorite mouth-breathing decade. Today we look at what has become, as you know, the unchanging classic of fashion: the Dacron suit.

This timeless ad is from the September, 1970 issue of Esquire magazine, a time when any good haircut had earflaps. In this ad, we see a man brimming with confidence. Is that confidence? Yes, he's brimming with so many things, confidence is probably one of them. Just look at him brim, there. In fact, his assistant is going to have to wipe some confidence off of her fingers after she's done installing his moustache for him... and also clean out the confidence stains in the pits of that partially-absorbent suit.

Oh yeah, the suit! "Dacron. The great new classic." See? Du Pont knew they were revolutionizing totally acceptible men's finery forever, with "wider lapels and pocket flaps". It's wrinkle-free, so your polyster suit will look exactly as good as the day you bought it at Sears. This one retails for the modern futurebuck equivalent of  just $520. That's like just a half pound of weed!  Best of all, a (mostly) polyester suit seals in freshness, so you'll be juicy and delicious when that special someone unwraps you at the end of the evening. Maybe your moustache installer will be the lucky one? Your confidence definitely says "maybe"!

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Vivitar - The sound of gettin' it on.

Most decades take two to three years to really form their identity. For example, The Eighties looked a lot like The Seventies until about 1983 or so. The Nineties looked a lot like The Eighties until about 1993. So how long did The Seventies - everybody's favorite decade that always seemed to have a rash that just wouldn't go away - take to assert its The Seventies-ness? Less than one year. Yes, this 1970 Vivitar ad is real. File under WTF?

 How do you sell stereos? Show people shower-fucking, stupid! (or in the preliminary stages of shower-fucking, anyway). But Vivitar weren't total skeezebags. On the opposite page, they did have the decency to show the recently-moistened couple cuddling... naked.

Thank you, The Seventies, for never disappointing! Surely there must be more ways you can show us how appropriate you were at every opportunity? Here, let me get that for you. Phil Are Go Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade! Assemble! Pksshoww!

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Good work, team! It looks just like it jumped right off the news stand and onto a filmy, smeary glass coffee table. You earned a break, PAGBGPB, go take several Silkwood showers and report to the Phil Are GO! PTSD Recovery Office.

Clicking it will only make it bigger, you know.

Mercury Colony Park - You got to let thirds rule.

A bright-eyed intern from the Magazine Search Pool dropped this 1964 ad on my desk this morning. That kid's going to go places. Why? Because she immediately spotted the near-perfect layout of this ad. Check it out.

Man, look at that. A nice composition is like classical music for your eyes. You can feel it making you smarter. But maybe you're not seeing the magic? Let's help you out a bit.

Faced with yet another product shot of their car, the art director could have phoned it in. They could have gone with some kind of perspective thing, where they drop the car in a field or something and shoot it from the corner, to show you how big the car is. But when you read the copy, you can tell that Mercury was kind of proud of the design of the car.

The beauty of a fake wood paneled station wagon is debatable, but in any case, they looked at the rectangular, slab-sided profile of their car and lined up the camera directly at the profile. Then, they put the car in front of a building that echoes the wooden linearity. The net effect of this decision flattens the car and the building into simple graphic shapes that - if handled well - can form a bold and clear composition that catches the eye.

If you look at the roof of the car in relation to the overall length, you can see the roof line is about two thirds of the car's length. You can divide the car's length into threes, and the roof takes up two of them. Then, notice that the belt line of the car falls about two thirds of the way from the ground to the roof. This all recalls the "rule of thirds": an old and ubiquitous tool that artists and photographers use to arrange pleasing compositions. Your camera probably has a rule of thirds overlay in the LCD screen. Your phone's camera app probably has one too, if you find it and enable the option.

Essentially, the rule of thirds is this: if you drop a three by three grid over your image and try to place points of interest along the lines, or the intersections of those lines, you're most of the way to having a really nice composition. The easiest way to make the leap from just taking pictures to creating a little piece of art is to start paying attention to the rule of thirds. Same for traditional art, too. In a nutshell, putting the focal point right in the center of the frame is really boring. It's what a six year old would do. Asymmetry is more interesting to your eye. Don't believe me? Go look at some stuff and come back in an hour.

So, the form of the car itself adhere to the rule of thirds. That's a nice start. Now, back to the whole photo. Let's put a three by three grid over the ad.

Well, look at that. The Colony Park is centered on a line one third of the height of the frame. This is not an accident.

The other details of the photo add interest too, like the lady and the stuff in the window.No, the window is not one third the width of the photo, but that's okay. The other elements in the image don't all need to slavishly adhere to the rule of thirds in their arrangement. To do that would be a little obsessive, and missing the point a bit. The ROT is just a near-perfect tool to place the major focal points of your image in a position that's far more interesting than just dead center.

The rest of the ad is similarly simple and beautiful. The pavement is just a big black rectangle, with the pavement's texture nearly eliminated. That way, the visual relationship between the wood in the building and the car is clearer. Here's another handy rule for pretty much art of any kind. "If it's not needed, remove it." The pavement texture wouldn't be helping, so out it can go.

With regard to color, the photo basically consists of four colors: red, brown, white, and black. Again, simple and controlled.

I like the two-box shape of wagons and hatchbacks, but lots of people don't. Overall, the deft application of artsy-fartsy skill on display in this ad does a pretty amazing job of making the much-maligned station wagon seem sophisticated and elegant, which can't be that easy. Very impressive, Art Director.

That's a pretty cool looking building. I wonder where it is. The ad is considerate enough to use the address as a design element, and it's easy to read. 17600 Northland Park Court. That's a pretty uncommon name for a street. How many of those can there be?

Okay, it looks like there's a 17600 Northland Park Court in Southfield, Michigan. Could this be the place? Michigan makes sense, as it was still the center of American car production back in '64, and the art director may want to stay close to the office for the shoot. Let's assemble a Street View away team and beam down to have a look around.

Well I'll be darned. There it is, wood and all. The parking lot has been grassed over, but there's the shot right there, untouched... at least, as recently as 2012. Holy crap.

This whole area looks pretty much un-demolished since it was built in The Sixties. Across the street and one or two doors down, there's another cool building with a crazy uppey-downey roof that no one would build today. See?



Looks like there's lots of cool stuff to see in Southfield. Who's up for a road trip? We'll need to load up the station wagon...

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Lea & Perrins - Mocking steak.

So, let's say it's 1968, and you've got yourself a little "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression" to enjoy with Western world. You've got a few pounds of ground meat and some veg. What do you put on the table to feed a family ? Sure, you could put together a nice honest classic like shepherd's pie, but what if you want to add that little extra dash of depression by reminding your family of what you can't afford? Lea & Perrins to the rescue!

Let's make a mock steak! Along with all that meat and a few strips of fat bacon, you've got the makings of a hilarious parody of a T-bone steak! Ha ha ha! Being desperate can be fun!

Using the ground meat and some other stuff, you can mash up a batch of multifunctional food putty that be pushed into the plausible shape of a fancier meal. Assuming your family have never seen or eaten an actual steak before, their stomachs will never know what hit them!

See? You can use some strips of, uuh, "bacon" to simulate a nice thick rind of fat. Remember to start with lean pork! Fatty pork would be gross and icky!

Broil the whole thing up while constantly painting it with meat flavored sauce and in twenty minutes you've got some kind of thing that people can probably eat and tell themselves it was kind of like a steak in a way! Toss on a couple of carrot strips to perfectly duplicate a T-bone, and you're ready to make them eat it! Fun-nuh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See how much better this is than hamburgers or a casserole or shepherd's pie or any of those other things that don't remind your family that you're deprived? Yeah! You see! And  because it's 1968, later on you can take your mind off your recent dinner by listening to some Steppenwolf and smoking that reefer that you spent the grocery money on. Problem solved! "What economic crisis, man?"

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Webcor Tape Recorder - Stalking your children.

What parent doesn't love secretly recording their children's prayers, which she believes are privately held conversations with the almighty? A bad one, that's what one! Webcor is here to help you stop being a bad parent.

As anyone can tell you, your child is a dirty little sociopath that will lie constantly... if they know you are listening. That's why Webcor urges you to buy a tape recorder and surreptitiously record their secret, private petitions to their god, so you can treasure their adorable wishes for a lifetime. You can look forward to treasuring such private wishes as...

"Dear baby Jesus - not hairy, grown-up Jesus - Please give my mommy and daddy a hobby, so they will stop recording my every burp and mumble, to be obsessed over again and again."

"God bless Webcor, for charging the future equivalent of over $1,700 for their tape recorder, so mommy and daddy can only afford one of them. Otherwise, mom and dad would have ten of those things hidden all over the house and I'd never get a moment's peace."

"Thank you, Flying Spaghetti Monster, for touching me with your Noodly Appendage and granting me wisdom to know fiction from reality."

"Please, Easter Bunny, let my parents get some kind of terminal tape poisoning, and let me ironically record their death rattle on their creepy tape recorder, so that I can listen to the sound of their life escaping their bodies again and again and again and again and again."

"Thank you, Great Pumpkin, for making my parents obsessively record my every word, so that I will have no shortage of evidence in my inevitable emancipation hearings."

"Pa pa pa oom, mow mow. Pa pa pa oom mow mah mow. Bah bah bah bird bird bird. Well, the bird is The Word. The bird is the word. Everybody's heard, about the bird. Everybody knows about the bird. Pa pa pa um mow mow. Mow mow mow mow. Now and forever, Amen."

Lifelike Robots to Take Over All Civilization!

Citizens, I hope you are all sitting down, for I have terror-clenching news to turn your blood Cold, and also clench it. A wicked Sculptor in Brooklyn, New York has built a mechanical automaton so completely lifelike that it - and others like it, surely to follow - will take over all forms of entertainment, and, in the ultimate Horror-situation, replace us all!

The machines of the recently-completed Industrial Revolution can do all of the Good Works of a Man, from threshing wheat to threshing children. This robot also replicates the Vital Functions of smoking and also fishing! What is to become of Our Civilization when such miracles such as this robot, which is indistinguishable from a Man in every way, become commonplace? Surely Man's technology has reached a dangerous Perfection. Is this the End of Science?

How will you know when your wife has been replaced with a smoking-and-fishing robot? How will you know when You Yourself have been so replaced? How, indeed, do you know it has not already happened? How???

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Bathroom laminate.