you treat me like a dog

(from The Witching Hour #49; December 1974)
Duke, the Action Dog!

When some woefully unprepared suburban adventures try to scale the slopes of Mt. Avalanche in mid-January....Duke is there!

When Mommy is sleeping off a hangover doesn't notice little Timmy's excursion into the abandoned Black Lung Mine...Duke is there!

When the enemies of Freedom^TM need a little impromptu menace to the genitalia to keep them in line...Duke is there! (Though he will deny any knowledge of it at the court martial proceedings.)

When your fancy dinner party is regrettably free of submissive urination incidents...Duke is there!

Duke's life may seem like a charmed one to many of you, what with the action, adventure, cool gadgets, and all. He even had his own secret headquarters (sold separately) kitted out with a periscope and the finest computer technology the punchcard and tape drive era had to offer.

While that's certainly a step up from usual makeshift lair under far end of the dining room table (strewed with cat food cans and fast food wrappers stolen from the trash, of course), all the fancy gear and accessories were merely futile attempts to fill the gaping void in Duke's inner being.

Duke wants YOU to be his MASTER...because without your firm guiding hand, Duke's life would be just an endless sea of emptiness and self-doubt, devoid of any meaning or purpose. He's a typical canine in that regard.

Dark ruminations about forgotten playthings aside, I wonder if it isn't time to revisit the "heroic pup as toy franchise" model, only with a 21th Century spin. My proposal has been prepared and is currently awaiting approval from the relevant powers that be...

The advances in electronics and toy design over the past three and a half decades mean that the Oscar the Pughuahua toy will include a voice activation feature, where certain key words and phrases will cause him shake off his inertial topor and prance around the house on little chicken legs. In case you were curious, those phrases will be "out," "mashed potato," "beef jerky," "go to bed?" and "donut." And, yes, there will be a variety of accessories (sold separately, of course).

Dr. Alimantado - Tribute to the Duke (from Best Dressed Chicken in Town, 1978) - When he wasn't zipping over chasms or hauling around his Rescue Rickshaw^TM, the Action Dog spent his downtime napping in front of the space heater in his secret HQ and dreaming to the sweet sounds of well-crafted reggae.

Depeche Mode - Master and Servant (from Some Great Reward, 1984) - Love in the Age of Thatcher.

nothing you can touch

Find a gap in the market and fill it, preferably in a more efficient manner than your competitors can manage.

That axiom might seem straightforward enough, but it can be highly problematic when applied to industrial capitalism's economies of scale. While you might make terrific profits upon unleashing a new must-have commodity, there comes a point where sales stagnate in the face of market saturation, and demand based on consumption and attrition falls well short of your corporate target.

If you have a stove in your home, you're not going to buy another unless it stops working somewhere down the line. Perfectly logical....until you consider that economy is driven by consumption, or more accurately the assumption of ever-escalating rates of consumption. Zero sum is a heretical concept and plateaus are where the losers go to die from falling share prices.

This is why there is such a thing as marketing. Not marketing in the simple sense of letting potential customers know what you're offering and where to obtain it, but marketing in the high-powered, arm-twisting sense of creating urgent demands where they wouldn't otherwise exist. There are many tools in the overarching arsenal -- such planned obsolescence (which has worked so well for the automotive industry and -- hahahaha -- BluRay), presenting minor tweaks as essential features (Hello, consumer electronics biz!), and broadening the perceived functionality of a product in a way that will convince folks to buy even more of it.

That last one is an especially favored tactic of the fine folks in the food industry. These purveyors of processed palate pleasers have never passed up a chance to turn an iffy medical study into a full court "this shit essential for your health" press or an opportunity to present some product-intensive nightmare as the cutting edge of suburban ranch home cuisine...

...which brings us to this ad from the late 1970's:

Yep, that's right. Miracle Whip Popsicles.

I am a man who likes his mayonnaise (with which Miracle Whip has a tenuous and contentious familial relationship). That mix of egg white, oil, and vinegar adds just the right tangy zing to a chicken or turkey sandwich, and when I was a wee lad, my favorite snack was mayo smeared on a slice of Wonder Bread. (Don't judge until you've walked a mile in my boots, 'kay?) I also know people who use mayo or Miracle Whip in less orthodox culinary ways, like as a dessert garnish.

That said, I can't imagine what it would be like to snack on a frozen block of mayo substitute crammed with frozen strawberries and mini marshmallows. I definitely do not want to imagine how such an unintuitive concoction would handle the long (or maybe not so long) trip through one's gastrointestinal tract.

I want to assume the strawberries would mellow the oil-vinegar melange, but given that someone thought that faux mayo-sicles would appeal to the masses, I can't assume anything. To paraphrase Bruno Bettelheim, "the cultural history of the 1970's is a nightmare from which we have just begun to awaken."

Psychedelic Furs - Pretty in Pink (from Talk Talk Talk, 1981) - The 80's, however, were pretty cool once you got past the rise of Big Conservatism and the constant fear of nuclear armageddon. The music was certainly better, at least during the first half of the decade.

(Note: I must confess a certain nervousness about composing today's post, as there is evidence that making fun of misguided foodstuffs from previous decades can turn a person into an unfunny, self-righteous, batshit foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing ideologue. I'm trusting that you, my dear readers, will hold an intervention should I start to succumb to that malady.)

Halloween Countdown: October 26 - it really happened

A Resurrection Plant, eh?

That reminds me of something that happened to a friend of a friend of mine a while back. This guy worked the late shift at a warehouse in North Reading, and used to drive home along Route 62 during the wee hours. Well, this one time he was making his way down the dark and lonely state highway when he spotted something really weird along the side of the road. It was a potted plant -- some kind of fern, he said -- just sitting there on the shoulder of 62 westbound in the middle of the sticks with no sign how it ended up there.

It was late October, when the first killer frosts come to the northwestern suburbs. This guy figured that the plant would die if he didn't do something, pulled to the side of the road, and retrieved it. He wasn't the gardening type, but thought that maybe his mom or his girlfriend at the time could do something with it. Anyhow, he put it on the passenger seat of his '86 Monte Carlo and hopped back behind the wheel.

While the plant, being a plant, didn't move or say anything, the guy said he could sense a "really creepy vibe" from the potted fern. He said the interior of his car felt colder, even though he had the heater cranked to the max. (That's not uncommon for a GM car, though.) He also claimed to sense an "aura of sadness" coming from the plant and it got stronger as he got closer to the Wilmington town line.

The sensation abruptly stopped when he pulled up to the lights at the intersection next to one of the many giant luxury condo complexes recently plunked down in the northwestern suburbs. When he looked over at the passenger seat, the plant was no longer there.

He sped the rest of the way back to his apartment in Bedford. His roommate was still up when he got there and asked the guy why he seemed so jittery. The guy told about the mysterious fern, even though he knew how crazy the story sounded. The roommate didn't laugh, for he had worked part-time with landscaping firm near the area where the guy found the plant.

He told the guy about how a couple of years previous, a local nursery had gone up in flames when the greenhouse heater exploded. The force of the blast sent the contents of the nursery flying in all directions. The owner of the business decided not to rebuild, and instead sold off the property to an out-of-state residential development firm which cleared the land for a luxury condo development -- the very same development where the plant mysteriously disappeared from the guy's passenger seat.

So if you happen to be driving along Route 62 on some chill autumn night and see a solitary potted plant by the shoulder of the road, don't worry. It's just the Resurrection Plant making another sad, doomed effort to get back home....

(A little context, maestro!)

de tian - Beyond the Autumn - (from a 1980 EP) - This piece of DIY postpunk makes pefect music to haunt arthouses by.

Halloween Countdown: October 10 - drinking booze with the vampire

For those times when the Dark Thirst can not be slaked by the warm blood of the innocent, I give you...

I wasn't keen on the Tim Burton/Marilyn Manson remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane....
Not only is the vodka useful in taking the edge off an eternity of cursed unlife, the high alcohol content makes it an excellent embalming fluid.

you should want to hide

These are interesting times we live in, capable of turning the most sedate of souls into a honorary urban guerilla. Even if one has no intention of striking a blow against global capitalism by tossing a trashcan through the widow of a Starbucks or by pounding away on one's Authentic Anarchist Tribal Drum^TM at a protest march, there are many instances where concealing one's identity is absolutely vital.

We like to think that the courage of our convictions and righteousness of our actions are strong enough to bear close public scrutiny. However, even the staunchest soul will quail when the cashier at Trendo Records arches a pierced eyebrow in response to one's query about the release date of the new Danity Kane album.

There is no shame in using subterfuge when circumstances demand it. The guerilla is the fish that swims in the sea of the people, and it is crucial to realize that ideological purity must occasionally take a backseat to simple pragmatism.

Yes, you could deliver a stirring lecture on why your longstanding affection for Diane Lane is written in the heavens above, but odds are that your eloquence will be lost entirely on the smirking, pimply-faced goon at the ticket counter, and you run the risk of missing the first twenty minutes of Nights in Rodanthe, to boot.

It is far better to slip in under the cover of an adopted persona, something can allow to glide undetected amongst the masses. Something like a grizzled old prospector, or perhaps even Sir Walter Raleigh. This might seem like daunting undertaking for a newly awakened agent of change, but thankfully the countercultural gurus at 3M have issued this easy-to-follow manifesto on the art of disguise:



Simple, elegant, and most importantly, effective. Trust me on this, I speak from experience.

Ernie Smith - You Won't See Me (from Trojan Box Set: Beatles Tribute, 2005) - It's impossible to top pop perfection, but this reggae rendition of my favorite Fab Four track does a pretty admirable job with the source material...despite scraping up against the pilings during the chorus.

Groove Armada - If Everybody Looked the Same (from Vertigo, 2000) - Try making different tracks yourself -- It's fun figuring out all kinds of samples, fills, loops, and effects. And "Scotch" Cellophane tape holds the sound collage together like magic!

the premises now in existence

From a 1921 advertisement for the Willys-Overland Sedan, a self-proclaimed "Woman's Car":


...at which point Helen was forcibly dragged from her car by a couple of Alexander Mitchell Palmer's agents, tortured, and sentenced without hearing under the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1918. Despite being born in Cedar Rapids, Helen was then deported to the Soviet Union, where she died of starvation during Comrade Lenin's "Glorious People's Economic Plan to Kill a Whole Bunch of People" a year later.

Chumbawamba - The Good Ship Lifestyle (from Tubthumper, 1997) - "This is your captain speaking. We appear to have run aground on the reef of harsh reality. Please make a mad rush toward the limited number of lifeboats. Millionaires and trophy wives first."

visual synergy: sham on you

Sam the Sham (and the Pharaohs)!

Shampoo!

The Shamen!

Sham 69!

ShamWow!
Sham 69 - Borstal Breakout (from a 1978 single; collected on the re-issue of Tell Us the Truth, 1978) - Sure, it's dumb as hell, but this driving blast of street punk never fails to grab me by the short hairs and set my blood a'pumping...and that's what really matters.

we are the hollow men

There's a PSA that has been running on VH-1 Classic on behalf of autism awareness which features rawk icons like Roger Daltrey, Rob Halford, and Vince Neill speaking out on behalf of the cause. All of the participants came dressed down -- wrinkles, receding hairlines, and all -- for the taping; all except the dudes from Kiss, that is, who appeared in their full facepainted and overaccessorized glory.

Telling? Yes, but not suprising in the least. Kiss and any vestiges of dignity parted ways long, long ago. (See also.)

The Moog Cookbook - Rock & Roll All Night (from Ye Olde Space Band: Plays Classic Rock Hits, 1997) - See, this is a gimmick I can fully appreciate.

a grave condition

Dr. West's Magical Revivification Formula^TM! Another fine product from the Romero Corporation, a Skeletal Family Company!

(Side effects may include a shambling gait, a slight rotting aroma, and an irrational craving for the flesh of the living. Should your skin split and slough off of your wet, gleaming skull, discontinue use immediately.)

Given the known limitations of the four-color printing process on cheap newsprint, perhaps photographic testimonals weren't the wisest method of marketing a skin care product, especially when the rictus-grinning models looked like they just stepped in from a community theater production of Carnival of Souls.

Zombina and The Skeletones - Nobody Likes You (When You're Dead) (from Taste the Blood of Zombina and The Skeletones, 2002) - Well, nobody that you would necessarily want to like you, that is.

Thirteen at Midnight - Skin Deep (from a 1983 single) - The Not-Quite-Human League.

never once gave it away

From a bulk flyer that arrived in yesterday's mail:

I know the economy is going through a rough patch at the moment, but if it has started turning tricks for tenners then things are far worse than I previously thought. I suppose it had to find some way to pay for its nasty and destructive addiction to neoliberal policies.

"Hey, mister, are you looking for some free market action?"

"For real? How low are your interest rates, really?"

"As low as you want them to be."

"Uh, I'll pass. You look like you're about to collapse."

"Wait, mister! Don't go! I'll throw in some offshoring and privatization for free! Please! The World Bank will cut me if I don't bring him back some cash!"

Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side (from Transformer, 1972) - "Then I guess the subprime market had to crash/effective regulation would have helped that dash...."

got your name, got your number

Like, those graphics are totally trippindicular!
It's 1983, and the home videogame industry is on the verge of a catastrophic collapse. The mad rush to cash in on the videogame craze has led to a market saturated beyond sustainability with substandard product. The bargain bins of Heartland Drug (oh, how I miss that place) are groaning under the weight of hundreds of unsold cartridges priced at a deep discount.

So how did C.B.S. Electronics choose to differentiate Solar Fox, its adequate port of an unremarkable 1981 coin-op title, from the rest of the hastily programmed contenders for the weary consumer's dollar?

By attempting to ride the coattails of an ephemeral popcult phenomenon engendered by a hit novelty song by Frank (and Moon) Zappa, of course...


Solar Fox: The TV Commercial
Solar Fox: The Comic Book Version
(clicking makes it even more bitchin', like totally)
Is the comic book ad an expanded "director's cut" of the television commercial? Or is it akin to one of those novelizations where the professional fan-ficcer author takes liberties with the source material? ("Chewie put a soft paw on Han's shoulder and gazed longingly into his roguish eyes...")

Unfortunately for C.B.S. Electronics, their tantalizing promise of "valley girl in outer space" action was sadly undercut by the utter lack of such within the actual game, and the "excitement" did end abruptly in 1984, when the company, along with most of the other cartridge mills, fell victim to the market implosion they helped bring about.

I was fairly oblivious to the great videogame crash of 1983-84 while it was unfolding, except as a beneficiary to the flood of Atari 2600 games marked down within purchasing reach of an eleven year old with a $10 weekly allowance. At $4.99 a pop, it was easy to build up a substantial library of cartridges. Even if most of the games were utter shit, one of the benefits of being a kid is that one's critical faculties tend to be rather lacking, which meant that even something like Space Jockey (hastily slapped together by the gaming wizards at Quaker Oats) could hold my attention for hours.

(Most of us grow out of such bottomfeeding habits as we get older. The ones that don't tend to be found in places like the scans_daily Livejournal community or the Newsarama forums.)

Occasionally I reget not holding on to my collection of 2600 cartridges, which was scattered to the winds in the great upheval after my mother passed away, but the feeling fades quickly after I revisit some of the more interesting titles via emulation software. Even the most dedicated retrologist is occasionally forced to admit that some things really are better left in the past.

Yeah, given the focus of today's post, I trust you're all probably expecting me to post "Valley Girl" by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa. The truth is that I'm not all that fond of the song, which I find more irritating than anything. Instead we've got the breezy new wave pop theme from 1983 Zappa-free film Valley Girl, which is my wife's default viewing choice when there's nothing else worth watching on cable...

Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo - Girls Like Me (from Good Clean Fun, 1982)

...and a sparkling synthpop obscurity...

Circuit 7 - Video Boys (from a 1984 single)

doesn't mean it's understood

Do you hate traffic jams? Sure, we all do!

But did you know that congested highways are just one symptom of a larger problem?

Now while some would blame overdevelopment and poor civic planning, the willingness of health care providers to boost profits at the expense of patients, and the widespread reluctance to invest in public transportation and infrastructure, others see a different cause...

Yep, overpopulation is the problem, but lest one misconstrue this as advocacy of a pro-choice, pro-contraception platform, some clarification is in order...

It's not a question of too many people, but of too many of the wrong type of people. While it would be gauche to state outright the definition of such, there's a reason the Pew Hispanic Research Center is cited in the body of the text, and not relegated to an asterisked footnote like the other data cited was.

These veiled words of caution came courtesy of the following coalition....

...consisting of various interrelated "astroturf" organizations and a publishing house (whose biggest claim to fame is releasing an English-language edition of this charming piece of psuedo-literary agitprop), most of which are linked to this bunch of fun lovin' folks.

Interestly enough, this attempt to put a more socially and environmentally palatable face on nativism and xenophobia ran in the June 23, 2008 edition of The Nation, the venerable progressive periodical which claims to be "a wholly owned subsidiary of [its] own conscience." I guess the question is "at what point does the need for advertising revenue override moral integrity?" Especially when one considers that this isn't the first time the publication has cut such a deal.

The Specials - Doesn't Make It Alright (from The Specials, 1979) - At least I can depend on these purveyors of fine two-tone not to disappoint.

never thought this day would come

Sadly, Marble King's powers of lofting and angling were deemed insufficient to earn him a place in the Legion of Super-Heroes.

While I've never had the (dubious) honor of knowing a bona fide "Marble King" (as my childhood peers were more inclined to view marbles as ideal slingshot ammunition), I am on friendly terms with the former Exchequer of Pogs.

The Troggs - Marbles and Some Gum (from Mixed Bag, 1968) - Thematically similar to the J. Geils Band's "Centerfold," but minus the softcore overtones. Is it just me, or does it also sound like a lost Davy Jones track from the Monkees?

brace yourself with the grace of ease

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I'd like to draw your attention to this jolly individual, the gaudily-dressed wielder of the Disintegrator Glove^TM and Dr. Ojo's partner in terror:

Fear...THE CRUMBLER!
He's crumbelievable!
While I do tend to feel a little depressed whenever I discover that a cherished piece of pop music has been repurposed as an advertising jingle, I couldn't help but laugh at the shrill, hyperbolic tone of this 2005 piece lamenting the use of a cheesy pop product to sell a cheesy food product.

Despite sounding like a lobotomized Carter USM track, EMF's "Unbelievable" is a perfectly fine bit of pop fluff, with the requisite levels of blood-pumping danceability expected in a proper "party music" track. I certainly wouldn't classify it as some kind of Gen X anthem, though, or use the commerical version as a vessel onto which to project my anxieties about getting older. This...

Work like this takes songs some of us remember from when we were single, broke and idealistic, ruins the songs, and points out that many of us now live in the suburbs, sold out to corporate America, and buy Swiffers and Kraft Cheese Crumbles.

...reflects more upon the insecurities and psychology of the writer than it does upon the intrusiveness of advertising in popular culture. (I can't be the only one who appreciates the irony of the Suicide Girls comment quoted at the end of the piece. Self-awareness, wha'?)

In those days when I considered writing as a craft and a potential career, I got involved in a disagreement with one of my peers, a fellow with a habit of counting his chickens before the eggs were laid, over the concepts of artistic integrity and selling out. He trotted out all the usual anecdotes about maintaining purity of vision, blah, blah, blah, and the predatory nature of entertainment biz. While I agreed that I'd never sacrifice a favored child on Mammon's altar, I also made it clear that I'd have no problem accepting a fat check for any and all of my minor pieces, even if I knew they'd be transformed from political satire into shallow RomCom pap in the hands of the purchasers.

The Clash's cover of "Pressure Drop" used to sell sport utility vehicles? Irritating.

Modern English's "I Melt With You" used in a fast food commercial? Nauseating.

The femvox cover of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" used to pimp Big Pharma's latest chemical cocktail designed to fuck with natural hormonal bodily processes? Unconscionable.

EMF's "Unbelievable" reworked as a processed cheese jingle? A definite step up, considering that the song had already been incorporated into the "jock jams" repertoire, not to mention being prominently featured in Coyote Ugly.

While it's only natural to feel disgust and disappointment at the insidious nature of the marketing beast, it's important to remember that one's personal relationship to a song can only be ruined if one allows it to happen. A negative response is still a response, after all.

...and when all else fails, turn to Sir Tom for guidance and comfort.

Tom Jones - Unbelievable (Live) (from the "Burning Down the House" CD single, 1999) - 100% Diceman-free, for the benefit of the asshole-intolerant.

jam or butter

Behold the apex of human technological achievement...

THE MEAT TOASTER
I did briefly consider writing a longer piece dealing with this wonder of the modern (meaning "1971") world, and its significance in terms of consumer capitalism's twin tenets of planned obsolescence and creating demand for unnecessary products, but what more could I really add that isn't right there in the advertisement?

It's a toaster, only instead of cooking bread-related items, it cooks meat. Not Pop Tarts, but porterhouses. Not bagels, but bacon. Not scones, but sirloin. To reiterate, it is a toaster designed to cook animal flesh -- in short, a meat toaster.

That the shell-shocked consumers of the early 1970's failed to embrace the manifest greatness of a device that utilized the costly inefficiency of electric heating coils to perform in three hours what would otherwise be a twenty minute task with a conventional oven does not surprise me. Very rarely (no pun intended) is a prophet appreciated by his contemporaries, especially when he seems likely to cause accidental household fires (or is fundamentally incapable of accommodating sliced onions, mushrooms, or peppers within his sizzling, juicy message).

The Toasters - Fire in My Soul (from Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down, 1997) - Sadly, a cool blast of ska is no substitute for a CO2-based flame suppression device.

The Meteors - Meat Is Meat (from Monkey's Breath, 1985) - From the musical meat locker comes this raw slab of 100% USDA certified psychobilly. Remember: The OTMAPP seal is a guarantee of eternal freshness.

Richard and Robert Sherman - Music To Buy Toasters By (from Retro Shopping Vol. 1, 2006) - How they rocked it out in Caldor's home appliance aisle back in the day. Muzak version of "Mahogany" not included.

and pay our fees

Here's another item from The Colonial Cookbook -- an advertisement for the finest feminine footwear fashions 1909 had to offer:

Remember, ladies: Only the most shameless of harlots would be so brazen as to bare their ankles to strange men. It is but the shortest of slippery slopes leading from exposed calves to the catastophic folly of universal suffrage.

(On a more serious socio-linguistic note, the use of "Patrician" for a line of Edwardian Era women's footwear is quite fascinating. The term itself describes a postion of privilege, while its etymology is rooted in the Latin word for "father," pater, from which the word "patriarchy" is also derived.)

Girls At Our Best! - Too Big for Your Boots (from Pleasure, 1981) - The treacle masks the taste of the venom.

deep scarred for life

My appointment with the endodontist is at Tuesday at 11:00 AM, which means, Providence willing, that everything should be sorted out by this time tomorrow. Curiously enough, I'm not feeling the usual sense of dread that accompanies such events, only a feeling of weary resignation coupled with inexplicably having "Philadelphia Freedom" stuck looping inside my head. Very unsettling, indeed.

One 1970's nightmare deserves another, so today's minimal content post features a 1972 advertisement for the Blythe doll. Poorly received upon its debut, the hyperencephalic Keanesian homunculus with color-changing saucer eyes has since gone on to become a prized totem among both doll collectors and camp-addicted hipsters. The dolls also have a large fan following in Japan, which, given that nation's well-noted fascination with the hellish zone where adorability and terror overlap, should surprise no one.

(click to induce a larger mental trauma)
Blyth Power - God Has Gone Wrong Again (from the 1985 "Chevy Chase" single) - No kidding. At least these anarcho-folk punkers are there to put things right.

His Name Is Alive - Her Eyes Were Huge Things (from Home Is in Your Head, 1991) - More of an ethereal interlude (from a 4AD band? The Devil, you say!) than a complete track unto itself, but the title was too perfect to pass up.

days of wine and roses

I'm too busy tossing paperclips at my current sword of Damocles to cobble together anything substantive at the present time, so I hope you won't be too disappointed if I gear down into low content mode until next Wednesday.

And so, without further ado, I present this pair of advertisements culled from Young Love #112 (October-November 1974):

Lesson #1: Write a short paragraph in which you promise easy money in exchange for minimal effort.
Lesson #2: Run the paragraph as an ad in a periodical where the audience is known to be somewhat impressionable and lacking better judgement.
Lesson #3: Kick back, rake in the cash, and read up on offshore banking schemes.

Placed directly underneath the above ad was this minimalist appeal to "the kidz":

LIKE GUNZ? HATE EVERYBODY? WANT YOUR FACE ON THE TEN O'CLOCK NEWZ? You'll LOVE Schoolstoppers Textbook 2008 Edition! You pay us 25 cents, then you make them all pay!

A Popular History of Signs - Halcyon Days (from Comrades, 1984) - Some subdued synthwave for a rather cold and gray day. This is April, right? Because I am sure as heck not feeling it.

last year's model

A snapshot of the cultural sensitivities of Nixonian America, as represented by two advertisements for model cars which appeared in DC comic books during that period:


Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Tijuana Taxi (from Going Places, 1965) - HONK HONK!

Happy hour at the Eden Roc's lounge: One-piece molded plastic chairs and the curved Formica surface of the well-stocked bar. The clientele sporting sharkskin suits and Brylcreem-lacquered "smart look" 'dos or pastel "Jackie O" ensembles and sky-high bouffants. They tap the ashes of their Kents into crystal ashtrays while sipping at their Tom Collinses or vodka martinis, and over the din of casual conversation can be heard the peppy, suburbanite-safe sounds of light quasi-Latin jazz, the echoes of which will resonate in shopping plazas and elevators for decades to come.


Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles (from Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, 1980) - This cautionary ditty about the dark side of paternalistic liberalism (resolved fortunately by America's drunken stagger toward petit-fascist ideology) came up on the Zune's driving playlist during the commute home last Tuesday, and it reminded me that I voted for Jerry Brown in the 1992 Democratic primary.

Oh, what a lovely thing the American political system is, offering each and every voter the opportunity to choose between getting devoured by fire ants or drowned in a bucket of slaughterhouse offal.

don't mix with new groups

I'm a bit busy today, but not so busy that I couldn't take the time to post this important reminder....
...that the Good Old Days^TM were actually pretty damn horrifying, and wonder why our society is more germ-o-phobic now than it was back in the days when polio, scarlet fever, and the like were far more widespread and less easily prevented and/or treated.

Rip, Rig, and Panic - Beware (from God, 1981) - I had been saving this short but unsettling instrumental number by the genre-transcending postpunk-jazz-funk collective (which included a couple members of The Pop Group and a pre-"Buffalo Stance" Neneh Cherry) for this year's Halloween countdown, but October is quite a ways off and it fits today's topic perfectly in both title and tone.