Weird Universe Blog — August 4, 2018
Beat your wife tonight… at bowling
I think it was 1973 when a Detroit bowling alley first got the idea to use the tagline "Beat your wife tonight" in an ad. Protests quickly followed. Strangely, this didn't discourage other bowling alleys from then using the same tagline. The last use of it I can find was in 1980.
Lansing State Journal - July 5, 1973
Southern Illinoisan - May 16, 1980
Fort Lauderdale News - July 15, 1973
Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 04, 2018 -
Comments (3)
Category: Violence | Advertising | 1970s
Mat Fraser’s “Cabinet of Curiosities”
The explanation is here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Aug 04, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Body | Medicine | Museums | Performance Art | Twenty-first Century
August 3, 2018
Silence Class
I wonder if it was possible to fail silence class. Perhaps by asking too many questions.
(left) Latrobe Bulletin - Feb 19, 1968; (right) Tampa Tribune - Feb 18, 1968
Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 03, 2018 -
Comments (5)
Category: 1960s | Universities, Colleges, Private Schools and Academia
Skipperette of the Fishermen’s Fiesta
The skipperette and her two mates will reign over Los Angeles Harbor fishermens fiesta during Oct. 1 & 2. L.R.: Mate Doris Spanje; Skipperette Amelia Nizetich and mate Deana Trutanich.
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Aug 03, 2018 -
Comments (0)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests | Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues | Regionalism | 1950s
August 2, 2018
Boy-Scout Cigarettes
On sale early in the twentieth century. The story is that they were definitely NOT endorsed by the Boy Scouts. Eventually the Scouts got legislation passed making it illegal for companies to use their name.
Winfield Daily Free Press - Nov 7, 1917
Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 02, 2018 -
Comments (5)
Category: Smoking and Tobacco | 1910s
Fake Flavored Condom Candy
1 Box New Imported Candy Geli White Candies Fun Snack Condoms Durex Chocolate Candy FunFool's Day Tricky Evil Harry Potter Candy
I got nothin'.
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 02, 2018 -
Comments (7)
Category: Sexuality | Foreign Customs | Candy | Asia
August 1, 2018
Pop Art
"Vital Capacity" by performance artist William Lamson, in which he battles black balloons. There's a longer, larger version of the video here (but not embeddable).His website
Brief wikipedia article about him
Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 01, 2018 -
Comments (3)
Category: Performance Art | Pop Art
The First Class, “Beach Baby”
Nice British lads, assembled arbitrarily in the studio, pretending to be Brian Wilson & crew. Happy August!
Their Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 01, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Music | Homages, Pastiches, Tributes and Borrowings | 1970s
July 31, 2018
Hunting Groceries
For one week in 1992, German artist Christian Jankowski "hunted" his groceries in the supermarket with a bow and arrow. From his website:Imagine trying to go into a supermarket with a bow and arrow nowadays to hunt your groceries.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 31, 2018 -
Comments (6)
Category: Food | Shopping | Performance Art | 1990s
The Monk Calf of Freiberg
I don't recall any of this being discussed in October 2017 on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
A misshapen calf, born in Freiberg, Saxony, on 8 December 1522, quickly became important in the German Reformation. It was born with oddly shaped legs (its hind legs straight as a human's) and with a fold of skin over its head shaped like a cowl—hence its comparison to a monk. An illustration made its way to a Prague astrologer, who "discovered that the monster did indeed signify something terrible, indeed the most awful thing possible--Martin Luther."[10] Luther himself responded quickly with a pamphlet containing a mock exegesis of the creature, Monk Calf, in which the "Monk Calf" stands, in all its monstrosity, for the Catholic church.[12] Luther's anti-papist pamphlet appeared together with a tract by Philipp Melanchthon[13] which discussed a fictional monster, the Pope-Ass, a hybrid between a man and a donkey supposedly found near Rome after the 1496 flood.[14] Circulated in 1523, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon's pamphlet was titled The Meaning of Two Horrific Figures, the Papal Ass at Rome and the Monk Calf Found at Freyberg in Meissen.[15] Luca Cranach the Elder and his workshop provided the illustrations of the Papal Ass and the Monk Calf for the pamphlet. Variations of Luther and Melanchthon’s pamphlet eventually were circulated, including one that depicted the Papal Ass and the Monk Calf in “an encounter between the two creatures. This opening page adds a new phrase to the title of the book: ‘with signs of the Day of Judgement.'"[16]
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Jul 31, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Anniversary | Religion | Europe | Sixteenth Century | Fictional Monsters
