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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Vintage and Ridiculously offensive cigarette ads

The title is self-explanatory, no? So here we go.

1. This one upsets me the most, for some reason. And it puts to rest that myth that older times were more prudish. This is pretty daring. SANTA!

2. And yet another Santa ad, this one with a real Norman Rockwell feel.

3. I didn’t think that old-time Madison Avenue guys were sophisticated enough to use subtle porn imagery. But here we see the precursor to what thousands of digital natives have learned as second nature: the porn facial.

4. Back in the day, consumers actually believed in the health benefits of milder cigs versus the harsher ones. It may have been taking advantage of ethnocentricity: foreign cigarettes were reputed to be harsh and foul-smelling.

5. How does ‘toasting’ tobacco make it safer? And the word ‘toasted’ makes it sound breakfast-y and sweet-smelling, like bacon or muffins. Well-played, Lucky Strike!

6. Comparing the launch of a new cigarette with the thrill of being a first-time mother? Why the heck not? Incidentally, can you imagine the artist who worked so diligently in producing all this beautiful work? The baby’s back in particular is very vivid and perfect, even if the mom is far too made up to be a first-time mother. Unless she had a nanny to take the new baby while she has a smoke.

7. I don’t even know what ‘over-smoked’ means. Except that that feeling makes you want to beat your child, and makes him want wear a sad hat.

8. For the well-endowed smoker, un-effected by  the tobacco-induced narrowing of arteries that causes a limp noodle. Look at her marvel at the long straight cigarette! Yeah Baby!

9. Sexy seventies guy want you to enjoy his life as much as he does. You know, he’s probably someone famous – those eyes and that lovely head of hair look familiar.

10. This is the best one, and I’ve saved if for last. The wife of a  Monopoly millionaire discovers her kids are suffering from Smoker’s Dyspepsia! And that makes them want to leave the house and visit the Blenkinsops!  Greys – for helping your children ease into the joys of alcoholism and lung cancer!

Stevie Wonder plays a drum solo

In this grainy, black-and-white clip, we see a  young Stevie Wonder howling away as his band funks the hell out. Then…

He is led up, past the piano, towards the drum set. For a moment the scene looks like the times when James Brown had his entourage treat him like a funk-stricken invalid for laughs. But Stevie is really teetering up there! He barely makes it to the drum set, and then, after his drummer sets him up, points him in the right directions like Stevie Wonder is a deadly and poorly-aimed weapon, the drum solo starts. And it’s a doozie. Check it out – a drum solo from one of the most talented men on Earth.

A Thai anti-smoking ad

Why can’t we have ads like this in North America? Granted, smoking in Asia is a lot more prevalent that it is here. But maybe, in order to put the final nail in the lung-dart coffin, we could re-create this wonderful ad, much in the same way we re-create European television and movies. Just a little extra to get even more North Americans to quite smoking. I think we need to make a special effort to make a commercial like this in French. Quebecers smoke like chimneys.

Kids call bus monitor ‘fat’ until she cries. They keep at her.

New on the viral video department: something absolutely heart-rending and disgusting.

The kids on this school bus are probably in the seventh grade or thereabouts. They go to school in the Rochester, New York area. One of them wears a number 35 Oklahoma City jersey.

These kids taunt and harass an elderly and overweight bus monitor until she starts to cry. The video goes on for more than ten minutes, but for her it must have been an eternity. They pinch her arm fat, suggest that her family killed themselves rather than have to look at her, and they also suggest that if she were stabbed, the knife would go through her like hot butter.

It’s pretty damn disturbing, and unfortunately, these kids (who should be aware of the internet’s powers) are going to be in for a reckoning. There’s nothing worse than having your worst behaviour recorded. I’d feel sorry for these kids, but in this case…. no, I can’t.

Sci-Fi classics re-imagined as pulp novels

Artist Timothy Andersen has made several book covers of Sci-Fi classic movies as if they were the sort of pulp lovelies you’d find on the bottom rack of the second hand bookstore. First we have The Matrix, which I like better than the entire series.

Then Alien, which I think Ridley Scott would dislike because it takes a high-concept movie and reduces it to a silly monster novel. Which is sort of what Alien is if you think of it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all.

Lastly: Blade Runner! A noir novel done up like a Mickey Spillane or Chandler novel. I love how the people on the novel are Sean Young and Harrison Ford done as vivid pulp characters. I love the insignia and the pricing, as well as the tattered quality, as if all these books have been living under a lonely man’s bed.

Creepy pictures

   When I was a young boy, I loved Disney. Lately, not so much.

 

And then I couldn’t go out into the woods.

Or the subway. Jesus Christ.

And I was left to my own devices: at home, ruminating on the biology, zoology, and I had to imagine what the inside of a Leatherback turtle looks like. Turns out it looks like tunnel into a Lovecraftian nightmare.

I wish I had a tough little daughter to take care of things for me. Like her.

Or maybe just her.

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