Play It Straight

The whitest musical family you'll ever hear.

"Finish" the "Job"

Um, what's the guy reaching for in his overalls in this old ad?

The Slowest Slide Ever Made

Browsing through old films I saw this PSA for high blood pressure. Maybe that's why the slide is so slow and safe. Don't wanna pop a blood vessel from all the excitement of a normal slide.

Little Debbie's Bra

Ace

What a great laugh he has.

Devo + Neil Young

What the? I still love Devo, but have gotten sick of Neil Young in the last few years. I think it was mainly because our old guitarist was a big fan, and I noticed a similarity in their guitar playing skills. The Live Rust concert is still one of my favorites, but I just can't listen to Neil any more.

Smoke a Pipe

I miss pipe-smoking. I wish it was still a thing to do.

Toynappers

What, they were planning on eating the toys?

Cecil & Beany

I thought it was called Cecil & Beany, but this says it's Time for Beany. Here's a bunch of photos from the show. Note the naked ladies drawn on the back of the set in the top photo.

Occupy Jobs

Saw this on Facebook. Take that, you smelly hippy losers.

Dummies

I hate it when people don't think. The family next door has a nanny (beats off–loading them to day care I guess). The nanny doesn't park in their driveway (which is large enough to hold 4 cars), nor does she park in front of their house. Instead, she parks right in front of our mailboxes. So every fucking day the mailman has to stop, shut off the engine, unbuckle, get out, walk 8', deliver the mail, take a picture of the car to document the reason he had to get out of his truck (I asked him about that once), get back in, buckle up, start it up, and continue on his way. I assume it wastes more fuel to restart the engine than it does to idle for 15 seconds. Then we come home in the afternoon and have to do pretty much the same thing, rather than just driving right up to the mailbox. I don't know why the USPS can't issue parking tickets to idiots who constantly park in stupid places.

Quadraphonic!

Shit! Electrophonic made some pretty crappy stuff compared to others (although the Electrophonic receiver w/8–track and turntable my brother handed down to me when I was a kid lasted for quite a while), but damn, they had some groovy design ideas. Check out this quad system from 1974.

Torpedoes

We need the old days back. Ya know, when men had secretaries and secretaries wore bullet bras and short skirts. This is from Ironside, season 1, episode 30, 1968. Click to make them bigger.

Alice Cooper Has Gone to Hell

I was a bit excited when I saw that Alice Cooper released Welcome 2 My Nightmare this year. Then I read that Kesha was on one track (What Baby Wants). Autotune is used heavily on that one and another (I Am Made of You). Nothing hurts the ears more than autotune. Oh, Vincent, what have you done? Bob Ezrin produced it. You'd think he wouldn't've done that to Alice. allmusic.com says that Patterson Hood (Drive-by Truckers) plays guitar on the album, but credits him as a composer. Even that doesn't excuse the user of Kesha and autotune.

Crunchy Bass

I got Kim a MarkBass Distorsore pedal for her birthday. It can make some far out sounds, from a little bit of vintage overdrive to full–on crunchy fuzz. With knobs for tube drive, low pass, high pass, and clean/distortion mix, the possibilities are endless. She thought it'd be cool on a few songs. It's about time she started messing with sounds.

A Little Present

If everything goes well Monday morning, I will be employed again, this time at MakeMusic. After my first year at MultiAd, they gave me a raise. As a token of self–congratulations, I bought myself a neat pen that I still keep at my desk. Nothing fancy. It was maybe $25 or so. Keep in mind that my starting salary there was really low for a software engineer. So yeah, a pen. Tonight I decided I deserved more for getting this much better job, so I picked up an Orange Tiny Terror 7W/15W amp and a 112 cabinet. I asked Kim if I have to take it back if I manage to not get the job. She didn't say anything.

Sporting Bazookas?

It took me a while to realize the bazookas in the lower–right of this ad were actually sights.

Pork Sammiches

We played the Vadnais Heights Heritage Festival last night. They had a showmobile (take that, Leo!;) for the bands to play on. It was much cleaner than the truck trailer they had in Foreston a few weeks ago. We had plenty of time to set up (I hate being rushed) and they were still serving pork by that time, so woohoo!! But, the pork was overly shredded and sitting in those big rectangular warming tub things (ya know, the white things you'd see food in at a church social), so it wasn't what I was hoping for from a pig roast. Still pretty tasty though.

We played 2 sets, then they had a fireworks show. They gave Denny a CD to play. He had to call the guy, hit start, and count off the first 10 seconds so the guy knew when to start the computerized fireworks show. The last shell exploded almost exactly on the last note of the song. Pretty cool. We played one more set, then as we were tearing down it started getting windy. Some tables had umbrellas, and they all blew over. Then when the little tent they had over the sound board blew over is when I started keeping an eye on the top of the showmobile. I could just see that breaking and come swinging down and smash us against the back wall. Just as we were getting the last half dozen things packed into our trailer did it start pouring. Close call.

The 2 new tunes went over really well; Kravitz' Are You Gonna Go My Way and Is She Really Going out with Him? (I sing that one).

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Kim took the week off and we had a staycation. Went to a small zoo one day. Laid in the sun another day. I started getting a cold last Saturday. It slowly got worse and didn't feel like doing anything at all. I felt better one day and recorded some drums (hi Leo!). Turns out that was too much work and it set me back. Laid around another day. Went to a small lake to float around in the sun, but they don't allow floaty things (the sign says something like "No floatation devices (ie toys)", but we asked to be sure if that really meant "that is, no inflatable toys". Nope, it means everything (they need to reword the sign), but she pointed to a small beach about 1/3 of the way around the lake where we could use them. It was a 15–minute walk on a nice path, and only 3 kids were there. So we floated until the clouds got too thick. Cold got worse for the rest of the week/weekend, but I'm feeling better today. We drove out to a big orchard we like to visit every year (usually closer to Fall) and got a bunch of good stuff. One thing even contained apples this time! I grabbed an apple–rhubarb crisp. Oh man is that good. I love rhubarb, but nobody around here ever makes plain rhubarb pie, goddamn it. But I did get my annual jar of rhubarb jam.

Hillbillies

We went out to dinner tonight at Maynard's on Lake Minnetonka. Nice place, lots of richers, it being a major part of the lake/boating scene and all. An extended white trash looking family took 3 tables next to us. They didn't exactly look like they'd appreciate the place, the food, or especially the prices, but who knows how people come into money these days. Not long after they had been seated, one of the big'uns let her extremely ugly daughter (for some reason reminded me of a leprechaun) out of the stroller and was messing with stuff in the various storage locations in it. I thought, "holy shit, she'd better not whip out a tit and start feeding that little troll." Thankfully, that didn't happen. Nope, it was worse. She changed her fucking diaper right there with people eating all around.

Don't they have an all–you–can–eat food court at Wal–mart where these people should be eating?