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.