Spot The Joke! - The Saturday Evening Post

Today we present a challenge to the Phil Are GO! Joke-Getting Assault Squad (JGAS), our hand-picked group of the most charitable and sympathetic staffers. Their task? To figure out why these are comics. It sounds easy, but nothing could be harder or less funny. Do you think you understand why these comics are comical? See if you can Spot The Joke! The JGAS's analysis is posted after each "uncomic".

Both of today's joke challenges come to us from the August 10, 1968 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Theory #1 - The woman's sophistication with regard to wine choice will make her an excellent spouse and/or life partner, but a very expensive one. This is funny.

Theory #2 - The woman, due to her discerning taste in wines, would appear to lead a life of refinement and luxury, despite her having obviously made her dress out of a bit of the meadow. This is funny.

Theory #3 - The lady, having spent a life drinking seventy-eight cent wines, knows one when she tastes one. Therefore, if her date has spent seventy-nine cents on the bottle in question, he has been swindled out of one penny. Depending on their particular state's laws on larceny, this may or may not be funny.

Theory #4 - The lady, whom the viewer may understand to be referring to the bottle of wine, is, in fact, looking at one of the flowers in the meadow. Assuming that the man has prepared the meadow for their date by purchasing and planting each bloom himself (which would generally be regarded as a romantic gesture), one of the flowers seems to be of inferior quality as compared to the other flowers, letting down the lady's experience for the evening. This is funny.

Theory #5 - Rather than being pleased that the man has arranged a romantic date by buying a bottle of wine to enjoy in a moonlit flowered meadow, the woman chooses to focus on the seeming inferiority of the wine. She will marry him regardless, and wait until her husband lies on his death bed, breathing his last, to remind him how he bought her terrible wine on their first date. This is funny.

Theory #6 - Arsenic usually sells for several dollars per bottle... not seventy-nine cents. This is funny.

Theory #1 - The boy has chosen to wash his ducks in a kiddie pool, while his mother expected him to was them in the cargo area of her Subaru wagon, which is famous for its water-tight weather sealing and general build quality. This is funny.

Theory #2 - The boy is bathing his ducks himself, rather than letting the housekeeper do it for him, which is obviously one of her duties. This is funny.

Theory #3 - Despite the fact that the housekeeper reminded him to wash them yesterday, the boy is only just now washing his ducks, while his mother impatiently waits to take them all to the duck cotillion. This is funny.

Theory #4 - The boy is apparently using soap to wash his ducks. The housekeeper has tried time and time again to teach him that a duck's feathers are coated with an oil from the bird's uropygial gland, spread over the bird's plumage by the process of preening, and that soap is neither helpful nor necessary for duck-washing. The boy's inability to understand this is funny.

Theory #5 - Despite being clearly wealthy enough to afford not only ducks, but also a housekeeper, the boy and his mother live in a car. This is funny.

Theory #6 - The boy is washing the ducks he believes belong to his mother, although he bears a greater resemblance to the housekeeper, suggesting that his relationship to the woman in the car is a sham that will ultimately cause him horrible emotional trauma when the truth comes out someday. This is funny.

[Commenter theories will be published in this peer-reviewed journal. -Mgmt.]

Ansco Plenachrome - Guaranteed pictures like this!

Just in case you'd forgotten that we live in spoiled times... we live in spoiled times. Your pocket wondercomputer is also a more capable camera than 99% of any camera available for any money in 1950.

However, your smartyphonecamera doesn't use Ansco Plenachrome film, which sadly means that you are not guaranteed to get snapshots like the one in this Ansco ad. Bummer.

Tilda. Melting the hearts of snowmen everywhere.

From what all the photography smart people say (well, type, anyway), shooting well in winter is tricky. The snow had lots of subtle shades of tone, all crammed way up there in the upper range of  colors that you could call "nearly all white". Adjust your metering properly for that, and any person in the shot who isn't Tilda Swinton will have skin tones that are probably all mashed together down near the "way too dark" end of the scale. But if you get the skin tones right, the snow will be all blown out to pure white.

That seems to be what this Ansco Plenachrome is aimed at fixing. It claims to be able to capture many subtle variations in tone, which would help in challenging lighting conditions. Cool, cool.

When a photography company is choosing the photo for their ad, they choose carefully. After all, it represents the aspirations of the target audience. The promise of what you - yes, YOU! - can achieve with their product.

That's why the kid on the left is a bit... surprising.

Yep. Of the many many photos taken for this ad (one would think), this is the one that was the best. The one with a young Elmer Fudd with a blow to the head... probably courtesy of a wascally wabbit. Just think what Ansco Plenachrome can do for your little Nobel Laureates!

"I wonder if I made the tenor's solo too adagio?"

Strangely, the dog looks like he's composing an opera in his head.




















But you know what? We're the real winners, here. We've got little Fudd's face to use as our personal avatar in whatever chat service/forum/social time-sink we're into at the moment. That's What Ansco Plenachrome guarantees us: An avatar that lowers others' expectations of us. You're welcome!

Click for 1000 px.

Okay, fine. have one of the dog, too, if that's what you're into. You're still welcome, I guess.

Click for... oh, you know...

Red Checkered Suit

For those of us trapped in 1969 with no idea what to wear, Esquire comes to the rescue again with this red and navy (although it looks black in the photo) checkered suit.

Maybe you absolutely must know everything about this suit? Here you go:

Notable points in the description are the fact that the lucky devil wearing this suit will enjoy comfort "without sacrificing style", and the price, which was $165. A quick stop at the CPI inflation calculator tells us that's the equivalent of... let's see, carry the one...

Aah, there we go. A thousand FutureBucks. If you think about it a certain way, someone buying this suit is saying "I would literally rather have that suit than have (the 1969 equivalent of) a thousand dollars in real, actual money."

Were there people in 1969 laughing at the gentlemen who paid $165 for this suit? Hard to say. When you consider what was going on in '69 (which was more or less the wheels coming off of every corner of American society), anybody who wasn't simply walking around naked would have a hard time getting stared at.

Unfortunately for those who are into status symbols (you know: people who shop at Lord & Taylor and simply must have the latest thing and use the word "couture" without irony) there was no way for everyone to know you paid the modern equivalent of a thousand dollars for this suit, without just leaving the price tag on it as you walk around. And that would simply be tacky! We mustn't be tacky.

What is tacky is combining the triangular pattern on the tie with the checks on the suit. Oh my, Mr. Granite. What were you thinking?

The March of Science #2

Antique Fondler Magazine

Post Card - Glass House Dining Room, Elkhart Indiana Toll Road, 1962.

What was going on, on October 2nd, 1962? I know you leapt out of bed today and shouted that out your window. Stop it. Your neighbors are getting tired of your randomly chosen days in history top-of-your-lungs demands for gossip.

But today, we've got you covered. Who's your buddy?

Click for 1600 px wide.

On October 2th, nineteen hundred and the sixty two'nd, Some guy called Jim C. bought a post card at the Glass House Dining Room Elkhart, Indiana. He sent it to his buddy Gene B. with a mundane note on the back about work and being busy. The standard kind of non-secret stuff you put on a post card that any postal worker could read.

This was apparently a chain of restaurants called "Glass House". Also apparently, they looked like this from the outside:

Image courtesy of  what the watermark says it's courtesy of.

Looks like landscaping was not a priority for the Glass House restaurant chain. Anyhoo, yeah, here in The Future, this place looks kind of cool, in a mid century modern, Scandinavian design kind of way.

If you're nervy enough, you could buy this card for two dollars, and turn right around and try to sell it on Amazon for twelve dollars. Jeez! This must be how people make their fortunes on the vibrant and exciting post card flipping get-rich-quick scene.

But you know what you really need? You need a PNG of the specific scrub pattern on this post card. It's had a long journey from 1962, and it's been in the bottom of a lot of drawers before being slipped into a protective poly bag and put up for sale in a Chicago antique store (sale price: two bucks). The ink was scrubbed away, over fifty years' time, into this completely authentic pattern of scratchiness. Seems a waste to just ignore it.

The PNG is more or less white scratchy marks on a transparent background, so it won't look like anything much until you drag it onto another image (which will be instantly transformed into a charming artifact of a bygone era). So, here it is over black, just so you can see it. If you're right-clicking this little beauty into your image falsification tool box, the PNG is the one you want - not the JPG.

Just a JPEG. This is not the droid you're downloading.

PNG of the scrub pattern, with alpha channel BG. This is the one you want.

You're welcome, with a side of french toast and sausages!

Celanese Fortrel - Big Little Lord Fauntleroy

In 1969, what exactly the hell were you supposed to wear? There was simply no way to tell what clothes to put on before you walked out of the house and into The World, where public people could see you and form opinions about you. That's why the American culture was in such a hand-flapping tizzy at the time. It was a national nightmare.

Enter, this Celanese Fortrel ad in Esquire Magazine (the journal of privileged douchebags for over eighty years) to save us all. Thank, you, Celanese Fortrel! Shew!

Yep. there you go, American men. Wear this.

Just so you know that you're safe to walk while wearing those shorts, Celanese has knighted them with the title "walk shorts". Man! Talk about streamlining the putting-your-clothes-on procedure! See, most days, when you get dressed and then just stand there in your bedroom for fourteen hours until bed time, it doesn't matter what you put on. Jeans... a bath robe... or just slip into a really large carpet tube.... If you're standing, your options are totally open.

However, if, god help you, you need to get dressed and then "walk somewhere", you'd be totally screwed. You'd frantically tear through all your drawers and realize that none of your trouser items have names prefixed with the word "walk". Then you'd have no choice but to hang yourself, fashioning a makeshift noose out of your pants (which were presumably called "suicide pants"). But, thankfully, Celanese put an end to the tidal wave of affluent young men offing themselves out of fashion stress by finally producing Celanese Fortrel "walk shorts". You can safely walk in "walk shorts".

Release the doves, for Big Little Lord Fauntleroy has emerged from his Dressing Chamber with his parasol. What's he got planned for today? Well, there's tea on the lawn, and then, maybe a bit of  a rest from all that effort, and then croquet practice, and then perhaps a biscuit, and then perhaps some mincing about in the drawing room, and then tea with the Chancellor, another rest, and then viewing the latest fashions from Celanese, in preparation for the dressing procedure on the morrow. Oh, the worry! Such a life!

Big Little Lord Fauntleroy looks familiar. I think we've seen him recently looking equally silly, but slightly less pansy. Where was that? To the Chamber of the Archives!

A-HA! The guy on the left in today's ad - who looks like a fake James Garner - was Kerchief Man in a Day's Sportswear ad that we ran about a month ago. Observe this link. Here's his head next to his head, just in case you for some reason have a hard time believing this.

Big Little Lord Fake James Garner Fauntleroy Kerchief Man, always daring you to laugh at his clothes.

Yep, Big Little Lord Fake James Garner Fauntleroy Kerchief Man loves to rock the kerchief, but then so did lots of people in '69. Why was that? Did people live in constant fear of unexpectedly being offered some crab legs, and having nowhere to dab their lips? What a marvelous time it must have been. Such plenty. Such bounty!

"Celanese Fortrel". Double-you tee eff are those words? Did people men who read Esquire in 1969 go "Celanese Fortrel, aah, yes, of course."? Are we, here in The Future, supposed to have some recognition for those words? Well, from the context of the ad copy, "Fortrel"'s full name is "Fortrel Polyester", but apparently its friends can just call it "Fortrel". So, "Fortrel" is marketing bullshit for "polyester". Aah, yes, of course. Marketing Bullshit. So what's "Celanese"? The name of the company?

Well, the Phil Are GO! Research and Googling Team found that, when you type those letters in that exact order into a search engine, it is revealed that Celanese is, in fact, the name of the company. It is also revealed that, two days ago, Celanese had a bit of a "whoopsie" with one of their chemical storage tanks down in South Carolina.

No spill. Shew! Also, no pants. This Celanese facility makes paint, it seems. So, the flow of  walk shorts remains uninterrupted all these years later! Well done, Celanese! Also well done, The Spartansburg County Hazmat Team! You saved us! After all, we're all wearing walk shorts, not "flee in complete terror shorts". If only Celanese would devise some kind of cunning "walk-flee shorts", we could walk and then decide to suddenly flee without needing to go home and change first.