http://osmovies.homestead.com

In a couple of days, bloggers everywhere will be posting about the fourth anniversary of Michael Jackson’s passing.  Many less will mention Farrah Fawcett, who passed on the same day.  Farrah, who changed the spelling of her first name from Ferrah, was a hair and fashion icon to girls of the 1970s, despite the fact that she only spent one season on Charlie’s Angels.  Although her legacy does not impact the world in the way that Jackson’s does, I wanted to give her a shout out.

http://hairstyles123.com

We can see these images in our minds: Farrah with the healthy glow, Farrah on the skateboard, Farrah in the infamous Mexican blanket swimsuit poster, too cliche for me to post. Long before The Burning Bed, the ups and downs with long-time lover Ryan O’ Neal, and the crazy stint on Letterman–the same year she turned 50 and posed in Playboy–she was a stunner.  And presumably sane.

http://listal.com

Here is mid-1970s Farrah with Wella Balsam hair, voluminous and sexy enough to rock right now in 2013.

http://posters57.com

Early 1970s Farrah flashes her Ultra Brite smile.

http://hollywoodphotostore.com

Even before the feathered locks, 1960s Farrah was a beauty, .

http://icydk.com

Like so many others, cancer claimed you.  So rest in peace, Farrah.  The world has not forgotten you.  

For a glimpse of her doing her best Marilyn Monroe voice, see her “cream” Joe Namath in his Noxzema commercial:

Looking at this new Barbie is like looking in a mirror.  That’s my caboose!!

Photo by: Nickolay Lamm

In my youth, Pace Picante Sauce commercials were on high rotation, showing incensed cowboys riled up after Cookie attempts to serve them a salsa made in “New York City.”  One of them goes so far as to suggest they “get a rope,” presumably to hang Cookie for his offense.  From these commercials, I learned that New Yorkers did not know squat about Mexican food.  And that meant something was wrong with them.  I presume they didn’t show this ad in NYC itself, but from what I’d learned on TV about the city, they were too busy getting beaten up on dirty subways and mugged in littered streets filled with apathetic people dressed only in neutrals.

I watched the Sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter, and they always seemed in need of a good scrubbing.  They lived in a land called Brooklyn, but I knew it must have been close to New York City, because there were no trees around.   Where were the pine trees and the live oaks?  Did they all live in ghettos and tall buildings with no yards?  Where did they learn to ride bikes and rollerskate?  Where was the laundry blowing on the clothesline in the sun?  Oh, wait, there it is.

shorpy

I’d stayed up past eleven by elementary age, so I knew the funny comedians lived on the east coast and yelled, “Live from New York” each Saturday night.  But I also knew Johnny Carson was in Burbank, and he was happy and funny.  The mean, bitter guy with the gap in his teeth and the bald keyboardist lived in New York.  Something just wasn’t right with that town.

Movies depicted a congested mecca of highrises and brash, fast-talking businessmen in Wall Street and The Secret of My Success, as well as a decadent drug-infused nightlife in Bright LIghts, Big City.   New York was a city where Ninja turtles lived in the sewer, where dirty, grimey homeless people begged for money in Trading Places, and ghosts infested grand hotels in Ghostbusters.  Even the muppets had a hard time taking Manhattan and finding work.  And it was in NYC where Kramer battled Kramer, the first time that it had occurred to me that a mother would ever conceive of leaving her child to find herself.  What kind of sick place was that?

Nevermind the Civil War, Yankees were odd.  They talked funny.  Their accent was nearly incomprehensible.  They said “youse guys,” an abomination of grammar, when we used “y’all,” a contraction of “you” and “all,” which made perfect sense.   And we’d heard tale of the Yankee reputation for callousness and poor manners.  Not only did they not smile and shake hands with strangers, they ignored them altogether.  What kind of hospitality is that?

Consequently, I never had a desire to go to New York, no matter how cool and funky Monica and Rachel’s apartment was on Friends.  I knew the truth; a one bedroom could cost a THOUSAND DOLLARS a month, and they had rats!!  Yuck!

xhsyoung.pbworks.com

Then the Twin Towers fell, and we all watched in horror.  Our hearts went out to New York City; people in Texas wore “I (heart) New York” shirts and Yankee baseball caps.  The whole country rallied around the fallen and felt the devastation.  But it just made it even more clear:  I never, ever want to go to New York.  No matter how good the bagels or the reuben sandwiches, no matter how pretty the trees in Central Park, I never needed to visit that place.

Then in 2005, the Discovery Channel gave me a reason to want to visit The Big Apple.  Cash cab.  Now that looked fun!  Getting inside a taxicab is far from desirable, whatwith the Hep C and polio virus inevitably covering all of the upholstery (is there any regulation as far as when to wipe those with Clorox wipes?), but that would pale in comparison to having Ben Bailey crane his giant bald head around to invite me to get paid (PAID!) to show off my incredible talent for trivia.  Oh, glorious day (or night, when winnings were doubled) to ride and play, answering questions about general knowledge.

I still get mad when I watch the episode in which two men risked all their earnings on a video bonus round, which required them to identify the rodent-like animal roaming about.  The question even referred to the Captain & Tenille song, but they still got it wrong.  How does one not know about a MUSKRAT?  ”Muskrat Love!!” I wanted to yell through the TV set.  I wanted to shake those Guidos, who weren’t even born when the song came out.  Well, that’s what you get for not knowing your pop music!  Out of the cab.  Kick ‘em to the curb, Ben.  I couldn’t live in a city where people cannot properly identify muskrats.  I won’t even visit.

I got this in the mail recently, attached to a pizza coupon.  I usually don’t pay these things much mind, especially since the woman in question was abducted at a distance of more than several hundred Rhode Islands from my home.  However, this one vexed me.  It shows that she was thirteen when she was abducted, and through the magic of science, they have age-progressed her to what she might look like at seventeen.  Which was two years ago.  Which is not what she’d look like now.  So what gives?  What’s the point of that?  ”Have you seen me when you time-traveled back to 2011?”  Do we only possess the power to age-progress to a four year maximum?  I don’t understand.

Except you, awkward white people.  You need to stop.

http://pinterest.com/pin/462322717968124569/

The fine print says “Get free dance booklet at your Career Club dealer.”  To those of you in your sixties (who were alive in the 60s), is that where you learned your dance moves?  Your Career Club dealer?  I bet your drug dealer could teach better moves.  Stiff and forced, Milton practically begs for a bottle of Schlitz to loosen him up–his hand is already in position.  Why, in ten minutes, he could be a poor man’s Davy Jones!  I don’t recall ever seeing “the skate” performed on American Bandstand, and I can pretty well rest assured it was never on Soul Train.  It looks less like skating and more like “festive ways to fart.”

http://www.facebook.com/TracesofTexas

A new Fort Worth Premier gas station opening in 1962 depicts great customer service for all your Chevy Impala’s needs. A sister photo reflects the steep price of gas at just over a quarter per gallon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seat850/3893433661/sizes/l/in/photostream/

And check it out: Buy 8 gallons of gas and for only a dollar extra, you get five place settings of fine imported silverware–enough to invite all three attendants in straw hats, as well as the two girls in modest swimwear, heels, and mod flips.

Why does hazelnut creamer taste sooooo good in my coffee, but hazelnuts taste worse than rancid calf fries?

http://www.onlynaturalessentialoil.com/hazelnut-oil.html

At that moment when I pull back the foil freshness barrier on my new can of mixed nuts, a world of opportunity explodes.  Like Guy Fieri says (excessively), “Everyone is in the pool.”  And it’s all good; we’re all friends here.  Except you, hazelnuts.  Nobody invited you.  We don’t want you living in our neighborhood, much less swimming in our pool.  Go home.  Go back to your fibrous husk and don’t come back.

Hazelnuts are otherwise known as filberts (which seems better suited as a name for a male born in the 1930s), but did you know they are also called cobnuts?  Verily, I say this unto you.  Can you feel your mouth salivating?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13016380@N07/2890056885/

It is rather joyous to say “Kentish Cobnuts” aloud, however.  Go ahead.  Kentish Cobnuts.  Kentish Cobnuts.  Why isn’t there a band called The Cobnuts?  It makes much more sense than The Lovin’ Spoonful.  Moving on…

It is a universal truth that the filbert is the base of the nut totem pole, the bottom in the hierarchy, the least desirable.  It’s the Mike Nesmith of The Monkees, the Whoopi Goldberg of The View.  And why is it that I can pony up extra money to weed the commoner’s peanuts out of the can entirely, but those dang hazelnuts are still clear and present?

What gives?  This is the land of the free!  Do the rest of you really enjoy hazelnuts?  Are you busy spreading Nutella all over your nine grain toast each morning?  You know cashews are superior.  And pecans.  And almonds.  And Brazil nuts.  Heck, even peanuts are superior to those wretched hazelnuts.  I would pay good money for someone to invent something akin to a metal detector, but much smaller and possessing the power to pull filberts to the top of the can, so I can grab them and fling them out into the back yard for my aging dogs to digest.  I’m pretty sure any animal that eats lizard tails as an appetizer preceding a meal of its own poop wouldn’t mind a filbert.  Then again–it’s a FILBERT.  Ick.

The only thing worse is biting into a nut of higher caliber, and then realizing it’s rotten.  Planters be damned!!  And you never get the head’s up on that; it’s always a crapshoot.  By the time you notice, you’ve already chewed it to a paste, and you can’t really spit it out, so you just swallow it down, hoping to quickly toss a fresh nut down your gullet to cover the taste of the foul one.

I admit I do eat them, but only because I’m all kinds of cheap and can’t fathom paying for something that may get wasted.  But sometimes I leave several in the can before tossing it out.  It makes a nice rattling sound as it hits the side of the garbage bin.

This new ad for the CX-5 (that’s the best name they could come up with?) declares, “When Thomas Edison threw the switch, it changed everything. SKYACTIV® TECHNOLOGY makes the Mazda CX-5 more fuel-efficient than any hybrid SUV.”

I believe this is called REACHING. Comparing Edison’s contributions to the world with Mazda’s ability to create an SUV that gets a WHOPPING (whoa–slow down, mister) 35 MPG? That is a mind-blower! What does a Prius get again? Oh, 51, that’s right. Can’t you make an SUV that gets close to that?

According to http://www.tomedison.org, among his over a thousand patents, Edison invented:

•  the electrical vote recorder
•  the automatic telegraph system
• paraffin paper
• the electric pen used for the first mimeographs
• the carbon telephone transmitter, making telephony commercially practical, including the microphone used in radio
• the phonograph
• the incandescent light

Edison in the middle of inventing everything we’ve ever heard of

In addition he discovered “Etheric Force,” an electric phenomenon that is the foundation of wireless telegraphy, as well as the “Edison Effect,” the fundamental principle of electronics.

After that, he invented the motion picture camera, the fluorescent electric lamp, the nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery, and the electric safety miner’s lamp. So, yeah, he and Mazda are in the same league, in the way that Schwarzenegger and DeVito are twins.

So Edison invented the light bulb, which you’re probably using right now. Big deal. Mazda invented the GLC (yes, it really stands for Great Little Car).

http://hooniverse.com

Top THAT, Edison!

Floydelle Pannell, I hope you never married, because losing that maiden name would be tragic.

“Oh, LaQuita, you will never KNOWWWW anything about my home, I”ll never know how good it feels to hold you…”

Just chilling on drugstore stools, kicking back with 6 ounces of tap water.

A quarter for a gallon of gas.  That’s all I have to say.

Is Gaye blind, or is she holding a rake?  Either way, they’re all having a good chuckle.

Wow. The new Chipotle ad is sad and beautiful and hopefully indicative of change in the food industry, because what we’re eating is crap:

What you are witnessing surpasses the pairing of peanut butter and jelly, Jack and Diane, or even Tanqueray and Tonic. It is indeed a combination of the Extra-Terrestrial and the celebration of the Savior’s birth. My mind is too blown to continue. If you are unaware of the merits of wrapping paper, feel free to go back in time and check out: http://sanceau.com/2013/02/01/thats-a-wrap/.

The June 2013 Men’s Journal included this picture of “Enduring Icons,” cars which have basically retained their shape and/or style. That’s nice, but:

• Are these the only three examples that exist within the expanse of hideous styleless rectangles uglifying our neighbor’s driveways and our nation’s highways as we speak?
• The older models still look better.
• Fix it please. I will gladly pay good money to drive a vehicle that does not look like NOW.  2013 will never go down in the annals as the heyday of automobiles.
• P.S. this pic was stuck at the end of a Range Rover review for times when you “need to ford three feet of water while getting a massage from your 20-way power seats.”  What I wouldn’t give to just BEHOLD three feet of water in this arid desert called Texas.
• P.P.S. The Range Rover starts at $83,500, which will buy you a HOUSE on the east side in this neck of the woods.

And speaking of woodies…

http://www.oddballdaily.com/

Waco, TX 1939

Yet another great shot from https://www.facebook.com/TracesofTexas today, taken by Russell Lee.

Back in the day, all you needed was four buttons to access ALL 82 channels. That’s right up my alley. Simplicity. Why have we made this so complicated from what it was in 1980?

Jupiter is still a bonafide planet, right?

The new RCA FD500 had everything one could want, including programming a week’s worth of shows. Who needs TIVO? Not only did it shut itself off after The Late Show, but it could turn your lamps off and on intermittently to ward off would-be robbers and thugs. Let’s hope they didn’t know you had scored the latest RCA, or you were done for! Even the AutoProgrammer could wake you up. No alarm needed!

And the colors were so vibrant! See how right the colors can be.

Yep, I think that’s pretty much all the colors.

I recall we were all a lot thinner then, but THIS IS RIDICULOUS. Somebody feed her! She is about to collapse under the weight of her videocamera!

And if you’re gonna do it, do it right. Don’t skimp on lesser models when you could go full on stately cabinet, pecan-veneered Marandino.

Or the Glenrich, a contemporary highboy. Oh, that’s a good name for a blog, come to think of it. Maybe I’ll change mine. Anyhoo, the point is not to skimp. You want to watch Thursday’s Mork and Mindy and Bosom Buddies in style, don’t you? Just think, you could be THIS guy.

You all know my beef with wearing pajamas in public: NOT ACCEPTABLE. Not to the mailbox, not to walk your kids to the bus stop, not even to put your trash out on trash day. No, sir, we don’t do that.  And that goes for slippers, too.

Not in the ghetto, not in the store, not in the driveway, do it no more.

 

Seriously, big fella? Did you think we wouldn’t notice?

http://forum.malvestite.net/

And just because you are at Wal-Mart does not give a grown-ass woman free reign to wear onesies, especially with a faux designer bag.

Footsies!  Really?

The only way this would EVER be acceptable is if you ran out of your burning house in the middle of the night, and ran straight to Wal-Mart to purchase bonafide normal clothes, appropriate for all to see, and you had the PRESENCE OF MIND to change into said new clothes in their rank restrooms before actually exiting the building.

The only other alternative I can see is to time travel back to 1962 and purchase any sleepwear from Montgomery Ward (no, it’s not a plural) because I have thumbed through that ’62 Fall & Winter catalogue, and let me tell you–the pj’s are nicer than today’s styles.

Yes, these were sold as pajamas–cotton flannelettes, to be exact. Why, look at how gay and merry these ladies look! One’s got a telescope. That’s science!

And don’t be fooled into thinking you can’t look hip and trendy in these modest choices. These were made for sleeping, not twerking, but there’s nothing “square” about a shift gown. It says so right in the ad!

Before viewing this ad, I didn’t even realize I NEEDED a bonnet to accessorize my sleepwear. See how it helps her with those fancy yoga moves?

And let’s don’t forget the fellas. Why wear a wifebeater and pajama bottoms with the name of the university that you only attended for one semester twenty years ago when you could wear this?

Go ahead; bring your pipe. What’s not to love with so many colors and prints? This guy is right on time.

And hey, so what if you’ve packed on some pounds after turning 40? Hide that flabby belly underneath one of these swank terry robes, also in TALL and STOUT. That means 170 lbs in 1962.

And let’s not forget the kids. These pajama sets are publicly presentable.

Makes me want to take a trip to Dream Town myself! Those ski pajamas could go from bed to elementary school in no time. Why change at all when it’s so fashion forward? But leave the sleepers at home, kids. Those plastic soles won’t cut it on today’s asphalt parking lots.

Seriously, don’t Betty, Tommy, Sarah, and Mike look smart? Nothing outdated about these Easter eggshell pastels. I suddenly want to eat some Jordan Almonds. Hey, let’s get in the station wagon and get some at Wal-mart. But first, let me make sure I’ve got my 1962 pajama set on. I don’t want to look like I’ve given up on every dream I ever had or lost every last shred of dignity.

For people of my generation, Bob Denver will forever be Gilligan, the Skipper’s “Little Buddy.” But to my parents’ generation, Bob Denver remains Maynard G. Krebs from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (also known as simply Dobie Gillis ), a sitcom that aired from 1959 to 1963.  Maynard was TV’s first beatnik and jive-talking bongo player, and wannabe hepcats thought he was cool. Even Montgomery Ward took notice and offered trim tapered cotton ivy shirts for those in the know.

In case you missed it, here’s a close-up:

So it wasn’t Moon Zappa or Valley Girls who coined “like” after all.  Mainstream American catalogs were doing it way back in 1962. They even used Maynard’s bongo-playing likeness to sell their combed cotton eversheen coats.

Facial hair? What the what? And check out these bobble heads. I wonder what they’d be worth today, American Pickers? Antiques Road Show? Pawn Stars? Anyone?

In case you’ve never seen Maynard in action, here’s a clip of him, showing his classmates the first portable music player, so he can listen to smooth jazz.

Ain’t it a gasser?

1962 Monkey Ward Catalog

There’s no denying the magical combination of camel and flare red, and no better time to cover your body with it than fall. Autumn. November. And that’s NOW. So go get your camel and flare red on!

The youth of today love Taylor Swift, and even she proclaims, “Loving him was red.” Look at those models and how interested they are in that gawky adolescent boy, holding a strawberry malted. Loving him is undeniably red.

http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/

WOW–even the sign is in camel and flare red! What a power couple–like Kim and Kanye, without the limitless ego and shameless self-promotion.

Jessica Simpson knows what time it is: time to carry a Fendi leather bag. In camel and flare red.

http://www.upscalehype.com/

Nevermind that she’s still in character as Daisy Duke in those ratty shorts that are binding up at her crotch, and please overlook the shoulder-padded jacket she stole from Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. The point is the BAG. The neutral and the POP of color.

But let’s not get distracted. It’s not the Hump Day Camel.

http://www.zazzle.com

Nor is it Jennifer Aniston’s flair in Office Space.

http://stevebaines.biz

And certainly not these flares.

It’s camel and flare red! You must admit there’s no denying the magic of camel and red.

http://www.animalhi.com/

See how happy he is?

http://www.123rf.com/

I just got another stack of old magazines, and this ad jumped out at me from a 1960 Look.

What’s right with this ad:

• Sexy moodlight
• Her smooth, parted hair, clipped low at the neck.
• It rhymes. That’s pretty cool. “Put the finest label on your table.”

What’s odd with this ad:

• He’s pouring Miller (the champagne of bottled beer) from one presumably cold glass container into another. What was wrong with the bottle? I’ve never understood that. And he’s not even tilting the pint glass to reduce that drastic amount of head. Hold it at at a 45° angle!
• Miller is from Milwaukee. Why does this ad look so Polynesian? Is this a theme party with Mediterranean olives and French bread and Greek spit-roasted lamb?
• I’m frightened by the menacing tiki sculpture in the background. It looks like one of those angry apple trees in The Wizard of Oz.

http://www.houseofhawthornes.com/

• The seasonal conflict: his shirt says winter, her dress says summer.
• His apron is too clean. Somebody had to rub that meat.
• This is too much food for two skinny white people. In fact, the lettuce appears to be making a getaway from the salad bowl. And you know such a demure, classy woman would never dare to consume more than 4 oz of meat at a time. Perhaps that partially lit door indicates a patio party. And those half a dozen plates imply guests are coming.
• If they are preparing for said patio party, why aren’t they arguing? You know he didn’t buy all the ingredients she asked him to pick up at the store. He should have brought a pen to cross them off the list, like she told him a million times. Perhaps her look is one of passive aggressive seething rage. He’ll get his later.
• He knows he’ll get his later. That’s why he’s topping off his third glass already. The fact that he forgot their anniversary last weekend didn’t help matters. Keep drinking, Ted. Keep drinking.