Jun 172019
 

If you’re an old fart like me you may well remember “The Banana Splits” as one of those inconceivably bizarre, LSD-driven bits of Sid & Marty Krofft madness that actually originated in the late 60’s but ran over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over throughout the 1970’s. It, like almost everything else from the 1970’s, was best left there. But SyFy has decided that it would be a good idea to bring it back. And the way they’ve decided to do it is… ummmm….

Ummmmmm….

 

in

 

 Posted by at 2:00 am
Jan 102019
 

Thanks to a snarky Fark photoshopping thread, here’s a Flickr page full of 1970’s 8X10 glossies of hopeful entertainers… who, I imagine, have been all of them all but forgotten by history.

the kriegsmann files

On one level they’re kinda funny… goofy lookin’ people in bad 70’s fashions with bad 70’s hair styles. On the other hand… here are people who had dreams of fame and glory, and who were they? But then look at any high school football or basketball tam, filled with kids with dreams of going pro: dreams that will come to a screeching halt with a broken ankle or a realization of a lack of adequate talent.

Still… go take a look and behold the wonders of the perm and the polyester leisure suit.

More than a decade ago NPR ran a piece on this:

Dumpster of Forgotten Musicians Launches Quest

 Posted by at 7:50 pm
Jan 022018
 

As a followup… y’all may have seen me disparage the 70’s from time to time. Now, there were a few good things to come from the 70’s… Star Wars probably being about the best. But apart from Star Wars, when I think back to pop culture from the 70’s, there is, for no readily perceivable reason, one thing above all else that comes to my mind:

Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck Of the Friggen Edmund Fitzgerald, a hit from late 1976, about a year after the sinking of the actual Edmund Fitzgerald. It is technically a good song. Probably technically a *very* good song. But Got Dayum is it gloomy and depressing. And for some reason… it just seems to encompass the mood of America at the time (even though it came from a flappy-headed Canadian). Even with Logan’s Run’s promise from only a few months earlier that one day you’d be able to download your very own Jenny Agutter, Edmund Fitzgerald just seemed to make it clear to the world that everything was terrible.

 

 Posted by at 10:28 pm
Apr 242017
 

Boy, the SJW’s get in a snit over “manspreading,” when a guy just happens to sit on, say, a subway with his legs a little bit apart (note for those unaware of male anatomy: sitting like this isn’t so much a “choice” as it is “that’s how dudes are built.”). The problem with this “manspreading” apparently is that it takes up extra space, space that an SJW could use to park her therapy teacup chy-hooah-hooah or a bunch of protest signs or bags of terribly important merchandise.

And so, behold these glorious ads from the early 1970s, where Lee attempted to sell pants that few men today would be caught dead in, never mind alive. Seems odd to have so many different ads with different models and different clothes, all in the exact same pose. Still, I’d pay real money to see male models *today* dress up in these fashion disasters, find some SJWs and intentionally pose like this across from them. Heck, maybe it’d be better not to have male models, per se… a bunch of schlubby dudes might be even better.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 11:56 am
Apr 112017
 

This one’s a bit different. Instead of shockingly awful mens fashions, this here is an ad for some form of cologne. Now, I have no idea if this particular brand of stink-pretty was good or bad… but the package it came in is, ah…. ummm….

Dude, naw. Naw, dude.

See this packaging travesty after the break.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 2:07 am
Mar 222017
 

The unceasing cavalcade of bad 1960’s/70’s mens fashion ads continues with four images that will make you question your allegiance to Earth.

Questions to ask yourself, beyond the basic “why, in Gods name, why?” include such as “did these ads actually work,” and “why are so many of the models just so damned goofy looking?”

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:55 am
Feb 212017
 

Here are two more images to haunt your dreams and harrow, yes, your very soul. Two ads from the early 70’s that demonstrate not only tragic notions of what makes good mens fashions, but also incomprehensible notions of how to sell said fashions. I’m guessing that this was a result of the fetish for “machismo” that filled the 70’s… not so much actual masculinity as a theatrical parody of it.

Pictures after the break to protect fragile minds.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:41 am
Feb 042017
 

I defy anyone who remembers the seventies to remember them fondly *and* accurately after seeing these mens fashion abominations. I suspect that the combination of stresses – Viet Nam, massive cultural shifts, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviets, hippies – drove the population temporarily insane.

Note: dates are in the filenames. Pics are after the break to protect sensitive eyes from these horrifying visions from the dim, dark past.

Continue reading »

 Posted by at 9:10 pm
Jan 262017
 

Some time back I kinda inherited a bunch of old magazines (you may be able to guess which one…). The idea was to sell ’em, but a bit of research showed that they have almost no resale value. Turns out, magazines that were printed in the millions and *not* thrown away didn’t really become collectors items. Didn’t help that the internet came along and, gee whiz, if you’re looking for a certain kind of, ahem, portraiture, there are now easier ways to get ’em.

So, they’ve sat here taking up space. But being the student of history that I am, I looked through ’em all. And there were a number of interesting things. Perhaps most entertaining are the ads. Sure, most are utterly forgettable. But some… some kinda jump out at ya.

So, because why not, I’m starting a new category of posts: Antidote To Nostalgia. Nostalgia is an interesting thing; on the one hand it can be fun to think back on good times (or times that are remembered as good), on the other hand, it is a dandy way to get history wrong and screw up your future by focusing on the past at the expense of the future. So what will be posted are things that are cringeworthy. If you are nostalgic for the late 1960’s-1970’s (the era of the magazines), there will be a whole lot of men’s fashion ads that should make you reconsider your priorities.

First up, though, is  an announcement for a piece of consumer electronics. There were always ads for electronics, but it seems they really began to ramp up towards the sort of electronics we know today starting in 1978 and really accelerating in 1979. This device from 1979, though, is a device that would be wholly useless, and largely incomprehensible, today: a calculator specifically to tell you how much a long distance phone call will cost. Counting for inflation, this thing would run you the equivalent of about $165, for a device that today would serve no purpose whatsoever.

1979-04-b

Yeah. In the late 1970’s, it made sense to some people to blow a day or mores wages on something that would tell you how much a phone call would cost. Go ahead and be nostalgic for *that.*

 Posted by at 12:24 am