Follies of the Mad Men #84

[From Playboy for April 1983.]

Here's the thing about visual icons: you should know what their standard meaning is before you attempt to use them.

Rowboat plus lake plus two individuals equals romance. Or fishing buddies. That's it, your only two choices. With the presence of a gaily striped parasol and the lack of fishing equipment, however, you're pretty much limited to romance.

So what this ad is saying is: "Wear our shoes and all your dates will look like hippos." Or possibly: "Those who wear our shoes are closet furries." Or maybe: "Our customers work for a carnival and like to spend their leisure time in costume."

Take your pick.

Bad Boys Blue

Well, at least the "bad" part was accurate in the name of the group Bad Boys Blue.

They Had That Back Then? #3

Today's lesson: Flat Screen TV (this is a long one to make up for not posting anything in a while).


From the February 1972 issue of Popular Science.

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Car Talk

Is anyone else reminded of the callers on Coast to Coast AM?

Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley

Time to make fun of the Eurovision Song Contest again. Here's the winning entry from 1984.

Flexi Discs

Vinyl records maintain a certain level of popularity these days. But I don't think anyone plans on reviving the Flexi Disc, which ceased production in the year 2000.

Visit this great site for a history of this odd phenomenon. Be sure to look at the Flexi Disc stamps from Bhutan!

The Big Snit

Personally, I would happily watch a TV show titled "Sawing for Teens."

The Chipettes

How did I never know till now that Alvin & the Chipmunks had female analogues in The Chipettes? Here, they sing one of my favorite songs--and I don't half mind their rendition!

Lotti Golden

In Look magazine for September 9 1969, there's an article about an aspiring young singer named Lotti Golden, who wanted to be just like Dylan. Never having heard of her before, I got curious and did some research.

She did go on to release a couple of albums. This blogger discusses her career and offers a compressed audio file of one whole album. This fellow does the same.

But overall, poor Lotti is so obscure she doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, and her records never made it to CD.

In 1982, she tried again with a group called Warp 9, purveyors of "new wave funk." You can hear two samples of their stuff here.

If you listen to the clip below, you might see why she never made it big. This song is like five different disparate songs jammed into one.

Farting Evangelical

As we learn in the Wikipedia article on Robert Tilton, this satirical fake video of "Pastor Gas" dates back to at least 1985. Yet it's still getting many views on YouTube and other sites, nearly twenty-five years later.

Now, it seems to me that the very longevity of a simple fart joke makes it weird!


Fart!!! -

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