2/27/18

2/23/18

2/21/18

Get a lift with a Camel! - Olympikcy!

Just in time for the end of the Olympics, we've found something Olympicky! Camel cigarettes were the secret ingredient to Olympic gold in 1935! Observe!

We found this ad in a 1935 copy of Fortune magazine, the favored periodical of the Monopoly guy. The ad clearly proves that Olympic speed skater Jack Shea used Camels as part of his post-race recovery regimen. They restore his "pep". See, cigarettes provide an "abundant supply of stamina and energy".


That's a laugh. Maybe it'll be funny to look up how Shea died. That should only take a second. Let's see.. clickety clack... aah here it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Shea_(speed_skater)

Jack Amos Shea... mumble mumble... nickname "The Chief"... mumble mumble... American double-gold medalist... mumble mumble... died January 22, 2002, aged ninety-one. Say WHAT? Double you tee eff?

https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/sh/jack-shea-1.html

Shea's son (1964 and 1968 Olympics) and grandson (2002 Olympics) were also Olympians, and it was just before the 2002 Olympics, where he would have watched his grandson win a gold in the skeleton event, if Jack hadn't died in a car accident shortly before the games. So, what took him out was a car accident. He didn't seem to suffer some dreary and horrible decline due to lung cancer.

Jeez. Even though this doesn't fit the conventional narrative, there's still not much reason to run out an begin a long and fruitful tobacco habit. But wow. Ninety-one.

Anyway, who else owed their lifelong success to Camels? A draftsman, a store manager, a tree surgeon, and this lady: Mrs. William Wetmore. See, since it was 1935, she didn't get to have a name. She was simply an appendage of her husband. And he, in turn, gave her a new appendage in the form of a new surname to replace the old clunky one she was born with: Wetmore. Man, I wish I could think of a joke about that, but nothing springs to mind. Ah well, I'm sure something will come up. So what did Missus Billy Wetmore do with all her Camel-fueled energy?


She was a... "New York society leader"? Good for her. The headlines are full of unfortunate stories about societies that wind up on the wrong side of the law because they don't have anyone to lead them. I don't know how many times this week I've read about misguided societies holding up liquor stores or shooting smack under a bridge. Damn shame. Thanks, Mrs. William Wetmore! And thank, you, Camels, for all our pep!

Oh yeah. The Camel Caravan is promoted at the bottom of the ad. That was a radio show. It sounded pretty much like you'd expect - tootling clarinets and horns that sound like they were recorded in somebody's nose. Here, smell for yourself. Hear for yourself. You're welcome!



Click for 1600 px.



2/20/18

Visitor at the door.


2/16/18

Bisquick - Pancake it till you make it.

Breakfast. For some people, it's the first meal of the day. And yet, for millions of Americans, they run out the door without taking the time to have a healthy, well-rounded - oh fuck that. Look at this groovy picture of pancakes from The Seventies.


By the early The Eighties the airbrush would sweep across the advertising world as the unheralded messiah of lazy, cheesy commercial art. People would love the hell out of  airbrush art, and it would later come to typify The Eighties so much, that by The Nineties, it would be (thankfully) played out, and regarded as lame as a pair of parachute pants.

In 1984, if you carried this Trapper Keeper, you were the coolest kid in homeroom. By 1990, you were a big lame, and maybe still sitting in homeroom.
An airbrush, in the hands of a really skilled airbrusher, is an amazing wondertool. Like any other media (you know: oils, pencil, etc. Not "media" as in "television" or "newspapers"), a master will make it hard to tell what they used to create the artwork. You'll hear people say things like "That's colored pencil? You're kidding me!".

So, yeah, an airbrush is not inherently stupid. It's just a tool. However, like any other annoying fad, like autotune, lens flare, or sampling, if it makes things easier to do, you can rest assured it will be wildly overused by way too many people people who use it as their shortcut to being "a artist". If they couldn't be an artist without their favorite gimmick, they're not an artist. They're a lazy fraud and a hack. There will always be a market for work like this. So, yay for lazy hackfrauds.

What's the airbrush of today? Hmm. Pick one. Computers have made it pretty easy to do nearly anything by clicking a few keys. Photoshop, for example. What's that other thing where you can replace people's faces in video and create fake revenge porn? Something like that, probably.

Okay, rant complete.

What's with the airbrush talk, anyway? This 1976 breakfast illustration looks kind of like it started with some airbrush to get started, and then maybe some watercolor or guache over that. You can see some brush strokes in the details at the edge of the plate, for example. Then there's the texture of the pancakes, which looks a lot like colored pencil. See? A good artist can work with a number of different tools and make it hard to tell how they did it.

Look at that breakfast, all shiny and glistening, like it's covered in rich, delicious vinyl. I don't know what this style would be called, but it's very Seventies. Someone should probably harvest it, pop it over an alpha channel background and save it away for a rainy day. Maybe someone will have a The Seventies-themed pancake party (god help us all)?

Hey! Look what a randomly chosen P.A.G. Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade staffer has done! Popped this groovy breakfast out of the ad and onto a nice transparent layer and saved it off as a PNG! Neat! Thanks, P.A.G.G.B.P.B. staffer! As for the rest of the ultranet... you're welcome! Graphic Gift incoming!!!

Click for 1600px.



2/15/18

Learn karate at home faster this easy picture way!

You at reading! Yes you! Stop read and get karate at home and learn this easy picture way! Not words way! Self should be defend against all! Words bad! Go karate on words, POW!

Are you tired of being bullied by giants, with their baffling quotation marks and words they say that aren't easy like pictures are? Learn karate! Not with words! Picture way!

Fear no man or giant! Brutes and muggers are also not a problem. However, no mention of knolls, goblins, orcs, or bugbears, though. It's possible they all have some sort of anti-karate AOE spell that nullifies your picture-way karate. Beware all non-brutes, non-giants, non-muggers, and non-mans.
No "mumbo jumbo". It's possible that mumbo jumbo would be effective against orcs, goblins, etc., but cannot be taught in easy picture way. For proper mumbo jumbo training, see Deepak Chopra, Dr. Oz, or Gwyneth Paltrow.
Karate expert splits 1" x 2" board with one swift blow of hand. Once again, the karate ad is foiled by its greatest enemy, the quotation mark. A one-inch by two-inch board would indeed be hard to split with your hand, but simpler still to just throw it away. If that's a one by two inch board in the picture, it's good to know our President once found work as a hand model. Zing!





This practice dummy is "suitable for mounting". Assuming that the mounting in question is of the "stick it on a wall" type and not the "humping like a baboon" kind, the same could be said of the beer-soaked cocktail napkin that is stuck to the ceiling of my basement rumpus room. It better be suitable for mounting, cause it's definitely mounted to the ceiling.

It seems that the wiener punch is an attack - wups, sorry! - "attack" that you can only learn from intense picture training, with the benefit of a paper poster practice dummy.  Don't all toddlers learn this special move by dint of simple trial and error? Could it be that all children have special karate picture-way training? Are we to assume that all kids also are expert in the nostril punch and the formidable thumb attack?

Best to just avoid kids, people.


2/13/18

Scrotch


2/12/18

Outies - June, 1973


2/7/18

Origami crane, step by step.


2/6/18

Brief Glance Eyewear


2/2/18