Category: Retro & Vintage

And The Times They Are A Hot Links

A long forgotten grade-school rhyme popped into my head recently and here it is.

Mary had a little watch.
She swallowed it one day,
So Mary took a Feen-A-Mint
To pass the time away.

The Feen-A-Mint, it did not work;
The time, it did not pass;
So if you want to know what time it is,
Just look up Mary’s little brother.
He’s got a watch.

Full Moon.

Marky Ramone talks about CBGBs and stuff.

The U.S. Tax System explained with beer.

These “Chimera Cats” are not photoshopped images.

Caren Zeldie Turner lost her position as NJ Port Authority Commissioner because of this.

Cool and embarrassing at the same time. El TIE Fighter más ecológico de la galaxia.

The world’s oldest living person is always alive because the previous record holder has passed on.

Broward County school shooting survivor Kenneth Preston did some homework and was squelched.

Some People Are Their Own Identical Twins. [via]. More here.

[Top image found here.]

Saturday Matinee – Dave Allen, NYC 1911, Hormel Pepperoni, YES & The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

That’s Dave Allen (1936-2005) and that’s a 1965 VW 6-volt Beetle. It didn’t have headlights. It had glowlamps. I know because I owned one.

1911 New York City restored hand-cranked film, speed corrected and with an added soundtrack humanizes the populace a bit. A lot of interesting things happened in 1911, itemized here and here. Sheet music sales determined the popularity of songs and Scott Joplin’s rags were hot, like Treemonisha.

Hormel Pepperoni advertisement [h/t Calo]. I’m speechless. Let’s get out of here.

YES stood out a bit from the music of the 70s. Sure, they were art rock, their lyrics were inane and incomprehensible, they’ll make you out and out, but their music was killer.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was very underrated IMO.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Auto Wash Bowl

“The Auto Wash Bowl was built in Chicago in 1924 by The Newway Auto Cleaning & Service Corp., allowing drivers to run around in circles to clean off the undercarriage. After that, they drove into a stall where they’d get a proper wash by an attendant.”

[Image & caption found here via here.]

Proactive Retributional Hot Links

18 April 2018 was the 75th Anniversary of The Doolittle Raid of 1942, the daring attack on mainland Japan after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A 1983 interview with (then 87 year-old) General “Jimmy” Doolittle can be found here.

Why some doorknobs are knurled.

Zen moment: Just saw a bee with one wing. Every time it tried to fly it ended up on its back, rolled over, crawled for a bit and tried to fly again with the same result. It never gave up, but it made the same mistake over and over. There’s more than two morals in that story.

“Have You Ever Really Seen The Moon?” is a collection of peoples’ reactions to looking through a telescope [via].

A beheaded majestic white swan didn’t bleed, wasn’t killed.

This is clever. Mechanical servos go digital.

Gumball Wars [via].

Ever work on a carpentry project, mis-measure the cut and end up with a short board? The BS100o Board Stretcher is the solution. “Measure once, cut twice.”

The Institute for Centrifugal Research (ICR) is worth the visit. If you’ve seen it before, it’s worth a revisit.

 

Saturday Matinee – Two Ronnies, Bagpipe Rock, Jim Stafford & George Harrison

American humor cannot match that of Ronnie Corbett & Ronnie Barker [via].

Not sure who they are, but they’re a Scottish Bagpipe Rock Band.

Meanwhile, Jim Stafford is both an underrated guitarist, a talented comedian, and he had some minor hits in the 70s, and he’s still alive. Congrats.

Stafford had a number of minor hits, but I remember one in particular. I’d just lost a girlfriend, and this song seemed to make sense of it all. In retrospect it didn’t, but so what.

Dude was and is funny.

Here’s one of the prettiest songs George Harrison ever wrote and one of the most appropriate videos I’ve ever seen.

For some unknown reason that song always makes me tear up, and there’s something in that innocent video that hits my heart.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Condoned by Congress, The USS Comfort Carried Captured Camels

In 1855, Congress approved a plan developed by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to import camels as pack animals for the U.S. Army operating in the American Southwest.

The camels were also considered for use as a long-range mounted force that could drive “hostile Indians out of the country.” The storeship USS Supply was refitted with special hatches, stables, hoists and a “camel car” for the sole purpose of loading and transporting dromedaries.

Once the first herd of camels was obtained in North Africa, Supply [w]as further modified to compensate for the towering humps of the camels by cutting away part of the main deck. The camels were delivered to Texas where their potential was recognized but the plan was never fully implemented due to the advent of the Civil War.

So instead of wasting them, the U.S. Army sold the camels to zoos. TRUE

[Image and story found here. More about the Camel Corps here.]

Hot Links Away In Margaritaville

“Keh-leh-fone-yeh.”

These guys are annoying as hell but they’re talented.

Gregg Shorthand is not a slide-guitar virtuoso. More here.

Flight 24 to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe now boarding. All systems are go.

An original copy of The Chantays‘ classic LP “Pipeline” sells for $27 and more. I have this same stereo copy.

Swing for a Crime is also in my collection. Spy music interspersed with clips from movies, including the unmistakable voice of Lee Marvin (as mobster Vince Stone from The Big Heat, 1953) yelling, “You pig! You lyin’ pig!“

It’s always 1700 somewhere. The Department of the Navy Superior Public Service Award has been bestowed upon singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett. It’s the highest US Naval award allowed for a civilian. Here’s a classic Buffett song that justifies that well-deserved award.

Mallows have been used as a food staple for thousands of years. The common name for Althaea officinalis is “Marsh Mallow” and it has medicinal properties.

The confection referred to as a “marshmallow” dates to the 1800s, and the original recipe used the root sap of the marsh mallow.

Yes, you can make your own marshmallows, and you don’t need to chase down mallow roots.

[Top image: “Osaka’s Marshmellow Kid” [sic] from a collection of fake retro Japanese cartoon characters, found here.]

Saturday Matinee – TUOOGB, Steppenwolf & Link Wray

I’m embarrassed to say that I never heard of The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain (TUOOGB) until recently, even though they’ve been around for a while. From their website:

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a group of all-singing, all-strumming Ukulele players, using instruments bought with loose change, which believes that all genres of music are available for reinterpretation, as long as they are played on the Ukulele.

Great stuff. The world is your lobster if you have a bass ukulele.

Nice groove.
It’s a cover of Willie Dixons’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Steppenwolf at the Riverfront Festival in Louisville, KY, 7 October, 2000.

How ’bout some 1974 retro?

Link Wray played so dirty and nasty. No flourishes.
It was all in-your-face-deal-with-it-badass-rock the way it was always meant to be.

You still want toast?

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here in a few hours.

 

“Bank of America will no longer lend to companies that make ‘military-style’ weapons.”

LMAO.

[Related post here.]

Vegan Hot Links Con Carne

The Ping Pong Match.

When birds attack [via].

So, a guy runs into a bar…

Turn on the sound for this one.

Is this a great country or what?

Jake and Benson share some fries.

It’s the worst time in history to be a clown.
Blame Stephen King.

Japanese a capella doowop group is awesome.

Need a hard copy of Wikipedia? Contact this guy.

Archery is not the same as when I was growing up.

Random Word Generator.
I got, “Hunt dragon log, pocket oven vitamins, spy bandage.”

Scroll for Old Croak – Kentucky Straight Embalming Fluid.

This Interactive Graffiti Wall is cool. Express your artistic talent (or lack of) for everyone to see.

[Top image: Leonard Emanuel was a hoot. Literally. He was one of the winners of the 1975 Hollerin’ Contest at Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina. Held annually since 1969, the 2018 contest may be the final one.]