Cars of the Rich and Famous (in Their Own Minds)

Black guys like to take big ugly 4–doors and make them even uglier by painting their favorite food logos all over them and adding big stupid wheels in matching colors. It's usually stuff like Skittles or Reeses. Aren't these choices a little obvious? I'm waiting for the Colt 45 and Kool Filter Kings cars next.

Stephen J. Cannell Died

That's too bad. He created some of the best TV shows around. Well, except The A Team. Couldn't stand that one.

Zappa Ad

This is weird. I was reading a Sgt. Fury comic book I downloaded and one of the ads was for Zappa's We're Only in It for the Money album. Normally, ads are for xray glasses, a lifesize Franekstein monster, Sea Monkeys, or a complete set of revolutionary war soldiers (oh boy). This is the first time I've seen an album in a comic book, much less one from Zappa. And look; it's expensive! It says so right there.

Clothes for Stevie Boy

So that's what I'm supposed to be wearing? Only if I can wear a neat hat with a little feather in it too. Just like Dad's.

Lily Munster

She was hot.

Sniff Sniff Gaaassssssssssss Phooey!

This made me laugh. I love the stuff that guy posts. Is the kid responding "phooey" because somebody cut the cheese? If he's supposed to be smelling a natural gas leak in his house, I don't think "phooey" is the correct message to send.

Robot Bikes

I forgot that Panasonic made bicycles. Apparently their target market was disco space chicks and robots.

Psychedelic Panther

I love the drawing style of the Pink Panther cartoons. This one ups the ante. The laugh track also helps the weird factor.

TAGS Comic Book

Well wadda ya know? Here's a comic book for The Andy Griffith Show. I just downloaded it and took a quick peak inside. Anj kinda looks like Anj sometimes, and you can tell which one is Barn and which one is Floyd, etc, but Opie has yellow hair and called Andy "dad" instead of "pa" in his first panel. Oh, and Aunt Bee has a big fluffy pompadour, like some showy Southern evangelist. Still, what a find this is.

BTW, the comic that was posted right before this one was Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys. I hope they fought crime or did funny antics.

Attention! Ninja here!

As everyone knows, the clothing of a ninja should be garish and bright to draw attention. And to make sure everybody knows who's the ninja in the room, it helps to have the word "Ninja" emblazoned on your headband. The modern ninja wants to be noticed. It must be true because that's what we see here in this movie poster for Ninja Commandments.

Titkerchief

A few lines in this fake voiceover for a horrible product made me chuckle.

He's Batman

I'll let this post speak for itself.

Drunks

Think of people you'd most likely see hanging out every night in a tavern in the late '60s. Not a bar, not a night club, but a honest to goodness tavern. The regulars, who probably don't drive and that's a good thing. They might be married or were at one time. If they still are, they won't be hanging out with their husband or wife because they drink to forget about them. Got them pictured in your head? Five bucks says they look a lot like this. Click on the fullsize image to proceed through the slideshow, and make sure you stick around for the last one, who looks like he could be Ed Asner's dad and needs some absorbent protection.

Wax Nixon

If this is how they think Nixon looked, I can't wait to see what they do with Obanana.

Truth in Advertising

The ad men sure were drinking a lot of whisky the day they came up with this one. It's true, but yeah, um…

EQ Woes

The last few gigs where we've used our own sound equipment, we've had more feedback problems in the front monitors than we used to have in the past. I was blaming it on the new monitors John got, some QSC K10s, which have 500W for the woofer and 500W for the tweeter, which kinda seems like overkill for the tweeter. We've turned to mechanical equalization on Emily's monitor the past couple gigs; tape a towel over the tweeter. Instant squeal–b–gone!

Turns out that our new board is the problem. Allen & Heath decided that for this line of boards, they'd put the aux sends after the EQ, meaning that when the engineer adjusts the EQ so it sounds right in the mains, it also changes the way it sounds in the monitors. More times than not, high end is added to vocals to crisp them up, and high end in vocal monitors is a giant no–no, because it just goes right back into the mic.

The other A&H models (like the one we had before) use the correct design, which feeds the un–EQd signal to the auxes, and even include internal jumpers that one can switch if they're not using the auxes for monitors and really do want an EQd signal sent to them. But the Zed line does not have jumpers. Arg. Their stuff is so genius and well built that I can't understand why they made such a bonehead decision about this.

Short of trading in this barely used board for something that has the exact same features and channels for one that wires the auxes the right way, we need to get EQs for the monitors. So we'll need 4 of them. Amazingly, Alesis makes this really cool 1–rack space 8–channel 30–band digital EQ. It has 100 presets, so we could even have custom setups with minor tweaks for every bar. And everybody can have their own monitor sound the way they want. Woohoo!

Training Orbs

This guy kinda looks like Milburn Drysdale, president of the Commerce Bank, Beverly Hills, CA.

The Munsters Pilot

Whoa! Here's a rare find; the color pilot made for The Munsters. While we've all come to know Yvonne De Carlo's Lily, I almost wish they would've stuck with Joan Marshall for the wife role. Yeah, she looks and acts more like Morticia Addams, but she's so hot. Thanks again, Crosseyed Cyclops.

Comic Books & Stuff

This is a pretty cool site. It's called Beware, There's a Crosseyed Cyclops in My Basement. It seems comic book collectors are huge geeks with nothing else to do but sit around and scan boxes and boxes of comic books all day. And that's great! Wanna read a Perry Mason comic book? How about one from The Munsters? Or four Mr. Ed comic books? Even comic book for The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Yeah, I didn't know any of those had their own comics. There's all sorts of cool stuff there. Maybe read an old Bananas magazine. Better yet, the entire Abbott & Costello Go to Mars movie.

Really, take a month off and start downloading. He makes lots of stuff available almost every day.

K-tel Ad

I'm guessing they got this girl from the shipping department in Plymouth or something like that. (Yeah, it's a MN company.) Or maybe she showed up right after school and was pretty tired from P.E. (the goofballs in Minnesota call it "phy ed" instead of "phys ed", pronounced "fie" like "pie").

Hammerax

Hammerax is a newish company (as far as cymbal companies go) that makes some amazingly cool looking and totally unique sounding cymbals and gong type thingies. They have a bunch of videos posted to their blog and main site. You can even mouse–over most of the images on their main page for a sample.

He's Horny

Oh, what to do when your trumpet explodes?! Always have a backup plan.

The Blue Amp Lives!

Looky what I brought back from Keota. It still works! I'd forgotten it was an Epiphone. I just knew it was blue. Dad had the speaker detached from the amp and had a long speaker wire soldered to the speaker that ran over to where a small TV used to be. The larger speaker helped them hear the TV when they were on the treadmill. Plugged the Strat in, turned it on, and slowly touched knobs and strings to make sure there wasn't some short or something (it has no ground). Gently turned it up after it warmed up and was greeted with some nice distortion when it got to full blast. I shot a short video so you can hear what it sounds like. YouTube is currently doing something with it; it's not there yet. I'll add the video here when it finally gets there.

I also got Bob's old Marantz 1060 integrated amp, which is newer than the Epi by just a few years. I played his 2 Rush albums (Fly by Night and All the World's a Stage) countless times through that stereo. It too still works, although the power switch doesn't stay depressed when I turn it on. Feels like there could be some gummy lubricants in there. I found a place online that rebuilds vintage stereo equipment and asked him about it. I have it down in the shop hooked up to a CD player and my old MCS bookshelf speakers. I tried 3 tape decks before the CD player. None of them managed to play a tape. Probably more gummy lube and/or dried out rubber belts.

Leave It On! Leave It On!

This is pretty NSFW. It's also the most pathetic amateur stripper you'll ever see. Perhaps some music would help keep the gyrating motions, well, gyrating. She's also about 3 months past touching up her bleached outgrowth. I wonder what that was she found on her face. A zit? Some food? Prepare to get totally turned off by the face she makes as she starts to tend to her nipples right before the video thankfully ends. Also good news; there is no part 2. Oh yeah, is that a rooster outdoors?

Lawrence Welk on Acid

Who was smoking the floor wax when they came up with this nightmare?

It's Motoramic!

See if you can count how many times he says "new" and how many product terms they made up in these '55 Chevy spots. Takes a while to load, so be patient, but you should be able to start playing after 30 seconds or so.

And that's "anti–dive brakes," not "anti–die brakes".

Hurst Girls

You never hear much about the Hurst Girls other than Linda Vaughn. The one named Nikki was so much cuter than Linda. Sure, she didn't have the ample jugs like Linda's, but who cares. Besides, Linda was chunky. But what I really wanna see is more pictures of that Hurst golf cart they're driving in the one photo!

Retrofucked

OK, now I'm getting angry. I asked Roxio about who my 6.x backup of my G5 is now complaining about a login/name problem when it never did that before I upgraded 8.1 to 8.2. I also complained about their wake-on-lan not working on that computer and asked when it will be fixed. I also complained that they have not put back into 8.x anything similar to the old Retrospect Event Handler and asked when that would happen. Here's what I got back. Copy & pasted canned responses.

Retrospect 8.2 requires the client to have a login username/password. You will need to update the client on the system. Mac OS X Clients require the following:
PowerPC G3, G4, or G5, or any Intel processor
Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server 10.3.9, 10.4.11, or 10.5.5 or later
RAM that meets Apple's guidelines for each OS
Note: Backing up Mac OS X Server clients requires Retrospect Multi Server or Retrospect Single Server with available Server Client Licenses.
Retrospect offers the Wake-on-LAN support for client computers.This gives Retrospect the ability to wake Mac OS X clients from sleep immediately prior to a Proactive backup, resulting in improved energy efficiency and reducing costs.
This should correct the problem.

I especially like that last line, the one that comes after a bunch of product specs and feature descriptions, not after, say, some fixes I could try.

Spaghetti Western Orchestra

I highly recommend you crank up the res to 720, or at least to 480 to get better sound. These guys are from Australia. I saw them on this episode of Later… with Jools Holland. Love that show.

RetNOrespect

So it seems that installing the 8.2 updates fucked up my 6.1.126 somehow. It can no longer connect to my G5 to back it up. I'm still using 6 for that because I need the Retrospect Event Handler to wake it up and put it to sleep. Otherwise it's a power hog that just heats up the room. 8 doesn't offer such a nice AppleScript thingy as that, and 8's built–in Wake–on–LAN feature doesn't work on the G5. They picked a non–standard wake–on–lan implementation?

But hey, at least they fixed the label recognition thing so it will once again ignore anything with the Grey label. It was including lots and lots of humongous stuff that didn't need to be backed up because the earlier versions didn't work with labels correctly. Looks like they fixed that in 8.1.x, but I didn't notice until now. However, they still put folders into the backup that should be filtered out, but not their contents. They say that's the correct behavior. I can live with that, even though it doesn't sound correct to me. Why recreate the folder structure of folders that will be empty and the user didn't want backed up in the first place?

Dudley Moore

He sure is one helluva jazz player. Here he is with his trio and his funny '60s British hair.

Vintage Wards Commercial

Too bad about the audio sync problem. Check out that fancy dispenser thingy where the Jet-Dry goes.

The Many Loves of Retrospect

Seems nobody wants to remain the owner of Retrospect for very long. It changed from Dantz to EMC a year or two ago I think, and now suddenly I get a release announcement from Roxio. At least Roxio has a well–loved product that should give some clout to Retrospect. And they still make you do all the legwork in figuring out how to download and update the clients and server, even though the app itself can download and install its own update. They give you a little dialog box that says to update the client and server, and there's an Update button, which you think will update them for you. Nope. It takes you to a web site and you have to figure out that you need to download the one named Retrospect 8.2.0 (399) Installer, even though that will re–download the app that you just got done updating. But it also contains the server and client. Why entire fucking thing isn't automated, I can't figure out. Dumbasses.

Snobby Bitch

At first I thought this was going to be an apology from a girl to her mom, but then it took a brutal turn. So, if you have kids, talk to them and don't always be buzzed. Good advice.

Tunnel Construction

For some reason, I don't imagine the people of 1910 being smart enough to come up with something like this method of prefabricating tunnel sections and sinking them into the river. For 1910 I think of castor oil and horses pooping in the streets and people bathing once a month, not engineers who can dream up this technique.

My New Band

Where do I sign up to join this NSFW band?

Stringy

OK, this is weird. Why was corny so big back then? Had humor not evolved beyond a singer wearing a large hat and acting like a hillbilly? But the talk box thingy is pretty cool for the time. Too bad they ruined it with the creepy puppet.

Grand Funk Railroad

I read a great article about GFR in an Uncut magazine that Kim's brother left for us to read. I didn't know that their big break was agreeing to open the Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4th, 1969 by playing for free. They were such a hit that the organizers asked them to stick around and play the next 2 nights higher up the bill, but still for free. They also crashed on their way to Atlanta and were soldering up their amps before going on. Their Shea Stadium gig in 1971 sold out 14 times faster than The Beatles did in '65. Their agent Terry Knight—a typical scheming shyster—did a lot for them, but also screwed them to the tune of taking 16% while the band had to split 6%. But they went on to record the biggest selling albums, with Todd Rundgren at the controls, and even had Zappa producing their last album. They sure are fun to watch live.

Kiss Fanzine from 1976

It's something, the lengths fans will go for their favorite bands. The study hall drawings, the typewritten text, photocopied photos, etc. all make up The Kisser #1 Vol. 1.

No Spitting

I wonder what the vocals sound like on this album. Maybe "mmfphffb blrrm mbbphl"?

Neighbors

When the hell is Neighbors going to be released on Blu–ray? Amazon has one DVD, but it's region 2. And there's another one, but I don't trust that it's a real studio release. It's such a funny, amazing movie that it deserves a full hi–def Blu–ray update. Ya hear me Columbia/Sony or whoever owns it?

Topless Karate?

I remember seeing this ad in Black Belt magazine and thinking how cool it would be if topless martial arts chicks hung around with me and my friends. I'm still amazed that somebody at this company or their ad agency came up with the idea and everybody else agreed. How does that even come up? "OK, we have our entire product line here in this beautiful outdoor setting; a gi in every color, protective gear, punching bags, T–shirts. Great! Now, honey, why don't you take your shirt off. Ted, prop up the nunchucks down there beside the belts. Perfect!"

I salute you, ad man who got her to take her shirt off.

This is pretty mesmerizing. I love the sound of a cello.

Old Cars Are Cooler

Maybe Evel should've used a 914 to jump the Snake River Canyon.



Nissan? What's a Nissan? It's called a Datsun, damnit.
Fairlady? What's a Fairlady? It's called a 240/260/280Z, damnit.

Michael Gets His Wish

Carnival What?

What the hell is this movie poster supposed to be telling the movie goer? Listening to rock & roll at a carnival will make women cold and men into wusses?

Arg. I hate it when sites prevent outside links to their images. Click here if the above link doesn't work.

Maverick

I love this Maverick GT or Grabber or whatever the model is, from an episode of Starsky & Hutch. I used to pass one every morning in Hopkins. This might be the same one I saw in an episode of S.W.A.T., because they weren't that common. But I just noticed something weird about it. Look at how far out that front bumper is. Maybe it's a stunt car with an extra springy bumper so they can bang into shit without crumpling the body and stuff?



Here it is in S.W.A.T. with the same deep bumper.

Slidin' Around

I managed to get my car stuck between 2 immoveable objects. Yeah, that's just an orange rubber pylon thing and some tires, but they have the same mass and hardness as concrete in the Forza 3 world.



Also drove a Subaru the way they're supposed to be driven. It'd be better if the track was muddy gravel.

Midriff

Ooohhh, so that's what a midriff is. Thank you, Wikipedia, for quite possibly the best graphical representation of any word you contain. Now, where can I get one just like it?

Choices

I love movie theater ads in old newspapers. They made it so hard (that's what she said) to choose a movie to see.

Punctuation Sucks

Ignore your real children and concentrate wholly on your step children's safety. You don't want them wandering off getting pregwaut.

Nutty as a Snickers Bar

That Gary Faulkner Obama Osama–hunter guy is about as batshit crazy as they come. Uh oh, I guess I'm just talking smack. But really, compare this interview with a Charles Manson interview and you'll see striking similarities in their thought processes.

Immigration Solved

Well, it's kinda true. We'd only need to post it in Spanish, because no way in hell they're going to learn to read English before sneaking in here.

Double Pump

Suddenly I wanna go bike ridin'. Nobody told me that tiny dresses and miniskirts is what the girls on bikes wear.

And who's the kid that picked the term "double pump" for giving somebody a ride on your bike?

Light Work

The florescent light over the mirror in the master bath died a few days ago. Sure makes it hard to shave and stuff. We got a new one yesterday (oh weird - just as I typed that word, the song Yesterday started in iTunes) and started swapping them today. Whoever put up the old one is a lazy jerk–faced douche nozzle. You know how there's usually an adapter plate bolted onto the in–wall box? And then there fixture is bolted to that plate? Well, this genius slid a bolt through from the backside of the plate and fixture, threaded a nut down over it to hold everything tight, and then—because the bolt was way too long—bent the bolt down so it wouldn't intrude into the fixture guts. It snapped off when I bent it back, and of course turning the nut only turned the bolt along with it. Luckily I was able to bent the fixture back and remove the adapter plate from the box. God I hate lousy contractors.

Freaky Pumpkin

No need to cut out a face when you can mold it into a face while it grows! It's equal parts neato and creepy.

Librarians

I don't know why librarians get such a bad rap.

Beer Me or Die

It's hard to believe that this burden on society would get arrested for fighting her boyfriend because he opened the last can of Natural Light. She looks so sweet and fiscally productive.

Beastiality?

Just what are they trying to say in this unfortunate illustration composite?

Mmmm, Babies

This old photo just cracks me up.

Nice Jugs

I always thought Mort Walker drew great looking cartoon women in Beetle Bailey. It's cuz he had a dirty mind, as seen in these rare sketches that never made it into the morning paper.

It's Crap in Any Language

What's worse than lame American pop dance bullshit music? Lame Indian (dots, not feathers) pop dance bullshit music! You might wanna mute it, because the vocals will hurt your brain. But the English "translation" is at least kinda funny.

iTunes 9.2

iTunes 9.2 broke the multi–item Get Info window when you add multiple artwork items. It only adds the last image. So if yo want multiple images in multiple items (like the front and back covers from a vinyl rip), you have to first add the back cover in the multi–item Get Info window, and then add the front cover to each track one at a fucking time. This pisses me off. They say the change was intentional. Why they broke something that worked correctly is beyond me. If you have access to the Apple bug db, please report this for me so they fix this goddamn bug. You can even use the Provide iTunes Feedback menu item in the iTunes menu.

Those Chooky Christians

I know big hairdos were the thing in the '60s, but these religious singing groups seemed to take it to the extreme. The Joyful Sounds liked it piled high, while The Faith Tones (no relation to The Dial Tones) went for more of a space helmet look. These 2 chicks knew the lord didn't want them wasting so much time on their hair, so went with snazzy hats instead.

Religion also begat some unfortunate phrases. Poor little guy. Looks like Neil Peart's gonna get lucky in the life boat. Which one is coming, the guy behind the bass player?

Some albums just make you wonder why it never got to be a hit. The same goes for the great name this guy has.

And yeah, some are self explanatory.

I love that site.

Home Porn

They don't even pretend to hide the fact that this is why home video recording was invented. Slightly NSFW, although no naughty bits are showing. But man, what a tasty bod!

The Dire Police Straits?

Pretty cool how they fit together. This guy does a bunch of these.

The Imposters

I thought these were cool, although they look a bit boring to play with now. Never had one, but I love the way they look when they're in the drag form, especially the Gremlin.

Lamar

This poor dweeb never stood a chance. Those enormous lips, nerdy glasses in Erkle position, and the deer–in–headlights stare all add up to… well, I don't know what. But sometimes it really is OK to just laugh at people.

Justice

Too bad America isn't more like China in just this one way. A guy on a motorcycle snatches a woman's purse and is then tracked down and beaten by everyone in the neighborhood. It looks like there were 2 guys in on it, because as they're beating on the guy who was on the motorcycle, another guy gets on it and tries to ride off, only to be attacked and brought down by the good citizens.

Kitten Killer

Really? This guy has mental problems and should be put down?

Finish Him!

Here's a freak who played a little too much Mortal Kombat. He claims he drank some tea with 'shrooms in it and thought his martial arts training partner was possessed, so he ripped out his heart and other parts. And he was naked. You can tell from his haircut that he's a bright, upstanding member of society. And his name's Jarrod.

The Balok Puppet Head

I love the shot of this fake alien that's in the closing credits of the original Star Trek series. His wide–open eyes and droopy mouth give him a really freaky look. And here are some shots of the puppet head in its current still–fairly–good condition.

Free Rasputin Beard

Maybe if theaters gave out cool stuff like free Rasputin beards to disguise yourself from the forces of evil, more people would go to the movies.

Gross

Why does Tila Tequila exist? Does she serve any purpose to mankind? Is she actually a real human woman? I really doubt it. I think her only talent is making money by looking and acting like nothing I'd ever want to hump. I've got nothing aginst breast enhancement, but I do believe the purpose of them is to make a woman look more appealing, more delicious, yet still womanly and natural. That's where most of these current no–talent whores go wrong. It's great to show them off, but they might wanna pick their clothing with more care and not blatantly show their breast surgery scars to everyone, and get more believable, pleasant looking enhancements in the first place instead of these monstrosities shaped like lumpy beach balls that they all get. Here's a pretty much NSFW example (click again to enlarge if you have a barf bag nearby) of this plastic slut showing the world her Frankensteinian features. Cripes, even her head looks fake and gross.

Geek Shirts

This ad in an old Popular Computing has some really neat shirts. No, "neat" isn't the word I'm looking for. Perhaps "lame"? All I know is I want the "bilingual" one. And hahahahaha, they call it "softwear". Get it? It's a nerdy pun! Oh, those are the best!

Country Roads

For those not on goddamned Facebook, here's a tune from last week's gig. Be sure to switch to 480p or 720p if your connection can handle it. Not sure what happened with Andy there in the intro. But I do know what happened to my voice; it sucks!

Ronnie Reagan Speaks

Here's a record put out in 1961 of Ronald Reagan talking about the evils of socialized medicine. I guess Osambala never caught this one on his favorite hangout's juke box. I kinda like the very last statement Ronnie makes right at the end.

Al & Ed Were Kids Once Too

I found this photo on a blog entry about Van Halen getting back together a few years ago. Sure looks like Alex and Eddie to me. Alex is already chewing on stuff and Ed appears to be taking the drum apart to customize it into a Frankendrum.

Hogan's Heros Comic Books

Far out! Download 'em here! Looks like they have 6 of them. Dunno how many there were in all—9 at least.

Hand Painted Signs

I didn't think anybody still painted billboards by hand. This is cool. Stick around for some time lapse during the end credits.

Raceless Kidnapper

A 14–year old newspaper girl was kidnapped this morning in a small Minnesota town. This guy should be easy to spot. He's over 6' tall, 235 lbs, and has no race. Yes, his skin must be totally devoid of color. He'll stick out like a sore thumb. Or, since his skin is the absence of all color, he'll be like the Predator with his cloaking device enabled, so he'll be nearly impossible to see.

The fucking lame, pussy news media these days rarely say anything about skin color, race, or religion when describing bad people we should be on the lookout for. That would be profiling, and that would make them bad, insensitive people. Grow a pair, ya cheese–brained morons.

Mr. Ed Voted Prettier than Sarah Jessica Parker

Like that was a hard decision.

Hooray for Hef!

He saved the Hollywood sign. How anyone could even think about developing that land… it's blasphemy!

Comic Book Submarine

This is great! Remember the Polaris Submarine you could order out of seemingly almost every comic book? Here's proof they actually existed! They're a bit smaller than I thought they'd be, and not nearly as submarine shaped as what was pictured in the snazzy drawing in the ad.

The Doll Squad

When's this gonna be released on Blu–ray?!

Three's Company Tribute

Heh. I never watched 8 Simple Rules with John Ritter, but here's a neat flashback they did to Three's Company. John does great Mr. Roper faces when he's listening at the kitchen door. And stick around for the surprise ending.

Genius at Work

I laughed. A lot.



There are many others by StSanders. The guy's an incredible musician. Some of the stuff going on in his take on Start Me Up is killer, along with the little nod to 1812 Overture, just like Alex Lifeson does in 2112.

Circuit Diagram

This circuit diagram is like something that would be in a Mad magazine for electronics geeks. I like the 50V supply that goes to ground on both sides, and the 240V supply that has the "omit this if you're a wimp" short circuit wire across both terminals. They even include a testing circuit, which is labeled "touch tongue here".

Robotic Talk Box

Stick a Talk Box hose into this thing and it could maybe be controlled by MIDI. Wait, you wouldn't even need the Talk Box, because it already has a speaker (or something in the back of the "throat") that produces the sound, so you'd just plug that into your guitar amp or whatever.

Ralph Malph Is Evil

Did anybody watch CHiPs during their last season in 1982/3? I guess Jon left and Ponch got a new partner (blonde, so nobody would notice). Here's a nice description of the Halloween episode starring Donny Most as a Gene Simmons-like devil rocker. It's a giant slice of cheese with Cheez Whiz squirted all over it. That's how cheesy it is. You could always count on something really pathetic when a goofy TV show like this jumped onto the Kiss, punk, or glam bandwagon.

Tiny Tim Goes Metal

Is that Peter Wolf introducing Tim?

Breakfast of Champions

A big ol' bowl of Post Sugar Corn-fetti and a bottle of PBR. Anyone else remember Jets cereal? I don't think I ever ate it, but do remember seeing it.



Image courtesy of Pleasant Family Shopping. A cool place to waste time if you think old supermarkets and shopping centers were more fun than today's stores. Just think of how much we trusted the cashiers to ring everything in correctly and without adding a few cents here and there for their own pocket. *chik-chik-chik kallunk* *chik-chik kallunk* I loved that sound.

Dandy Dick Landy

Here's what drag racing used to be like. It's Dandy Dick Landy in one of his many Dodge drag cars, chompin' on a stogy, no fire–proof face mask or racing suit.

Digital Recorder

Kim picked up a Zoom H4n digital recorder last night. I'd been thinking about getting one for a while, as a way of getting better audio from our live shows than what John's digital camcorder gets. It can record in 4–track mode; 2 for the onboard mics and 2 for the external inputs, which we could take off the board. It comes with a slightly conical shaft that screws into the standard tripod mount on the bottom, and the shaft fits into a standard mic holder. Neat idea if you don't have a tripod.

Pixels

Whoa. This is a very cool little video.

Groovy Bikes

Holy smokes! I remember seeing these bikes. The one with the steering wheel would make any kid the envy of the neighborhood. This page is from the 1969 Sears Wish Book. This site has a bunch of xmas catalogs scanned in their entirety. Somebody went to a lot of work to put those online.



Oh, and here's J.C. Penney's version from 1970:

Heavy Metal Drums

Here are some really old Bob Seger songs and supposedly a photo of the Bob Seger System. Dig the drums with the HVAC elbows. They almost didn't fit under the ceiling beams. I like the RW&B Firebird.

Video Player Volume Choices

There are getting to be more and more Flash–based video players out on the web. Seems like everybody wants to design their own instead of just posting to YouTube and using theirs. Fine, whatever. Except not everybody knows how to do good UI design and they end up putting controls in stupid places, or they don't hide the cursor when it's in certain spots after going fullscreen. But the thing that bugs me most is how more than half of the ones I've encountered lately make the absurd decision to start with the audio volume at somewhere between 50% and 80% instead of 100%. Most people set their volume to what they're doing (working at an office, surfing at home, etc), which means that the audio output of every piece of software should output at full volume and let the final volume level be dictated by the user's main volume level, whether that be in software or with a knob on their external speakers. So every time I hit one of these weird video players, I have to hunt down their goofy idea of what a volume control should look like, figure out how it works, and crank it up to 100% like it should be. Some of these idiotic controls don't even work like a slider; you can't simply click anywhere in the control and drag haphazardly up or to the right. Nope. Some show you 5 vertical bars of increasing height from left to right. You have to carefully aim and click on the bar that represents the volume level you want (the biggest one), and these bars are usually only a few pixels wide, which takes your attention away from the video you wanted to watch and hear in the first place, so then after you fix the volume, you have to go back and figure out where the progress bar is and try to start the video over, if it will let you do that.

Manakin Schmanakin

I read this band's name somewhere else recently, then saw this video posted. I didn't know what to expect, especially when the leader singer did that freaky shit. I actually liked the music though; great bass playing and sound. But what's up with the cymbals? They appear to be as high as they can go. Maybe it's so he can be seen. Maybe the stage director made him do that. Talk about wasted energy reaching for them.

I actually think Skip "Real People" Stephenson, who introduced the band, was creepier than the singer. *shudder*

Scum of the Earth

I stumbled onto this blog. It's a Tumbler photo blog of women who contribute nothing to society, criminals, crack whores, general scum and wastes of oxygen. There are some truly scary looking bitches out there. The piercings, drawn–on eyebrows, and bright red hair only make them more trashy looking.