LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2018 FRIDAY

I was standing on the corner, watching all the cars go by - and then they stopped. Every street downtown is under construction, and it bollixes up the flow. The back of one big vehicle - your F-150 sized pickup - was turning into the congested street, and was blocking the intersection; a guy next to me, rangy and jangly, wanted to cross. He had ants in his pants. He had a place to be. He moved to cross, and the driver of the car waved him on: go ahead, cross, I see you, I will not run you down.

So the guy ran across the street and the was run down by another car.

I saw it, I heard it: thump. A car was going through the intersection on the green, didn’t see the guy coming around the front of the F-150, and nailed him. The car stopped; the guy moaned and rolled around; I saw people coming from the sidewalk to attend to the guy and got out my phone, waved it around: I’ll call it in.

The 911 dispatcher was calm and a bit bored, as usual. The ambulance was there in four minutes. The cops were there in under ten. The man was loaded on a stretcher while I talked to the cop - he took my statement before the driver’s. I would like to think I was concise and helpful. The driver was pee-oh’d, really: dude goes and gets himself hit by a damn car, and she was just running an errand.

It was only until later that I realized I had no memory of what happened to the F-150. It’s like it vanished. The timeframe required it to zoom ahead a half-second after the guy ran around the front, but it’s as if my mind just erased it from the scene. The driver no doubt just drove on, thinking I will be a tea-sipping lizard about this and proceed on my day. But the time required for him to proceed ahead and the time allotted for the guy to get around and get hit - they don’t match up.

They just don’t. But they have to. The truck was gone, I heard the thump, I saw the guy in the last stages of Getting Hit. It took two seconds, at the most. Enough time for the F-150 to advance? Obviously. But in my mind, it just evaporated.

Eyewitness account: always rock-solid and trustworthy.

You know me. I can't resist this crap.

"Groovy History."

Vintage Ads From The Past That We Don't See Today
Written by Karen Harris

You won’t believe these ads from the past! The series of images show actual ads from the 1960s and 1970s that prove we’ve come a long way, baby! They are unhealthy, sexist, and downright dangerous…but a fun and incredible reminder of life fifty-some years ago.

Here’s an actual line from the piece.

Sex sells, even in the 1960s.

So you know we're dealing with a genuine expert here.

Most of the ads are the usual ones you see in these Shocking Vintage Ad collections, and the author has the usual scoldy humorlessness about the past - did you know sex roles were different than today? They were! Things were bad! The copy just writes itself.

My only question is how long it'll take for the author to be fooled by a fake. This was number two.

Says the eagle-eyed author:

Did this ad just poke fun at a person with a disability? Yes, it did! Superstar recording artist Stevie Wonder has been blind since infancy. He hasn’t let that disability stop him from becoming one of America’s all-time great singer and songwriter. But asking Stevie to be the pitch man for a video gaming system seems like quite the stretch. Surely there was another celebrity spokesman that Atari could have used. Still, it is humbling and inspiring that Stevie is able to joke about his disability.

For heaven's sake, read the copy. "With some system controllers Stevie would be all thumbs. What use are numbers when you can't see? . . . Even Stevie can fumble his way through a joystick." Yes, that's gen-u-wine copy, right there.

Here's another. Clickity McLinkchum writes:

The slogan in this Pontiac ad has a loaded double meaning, which we are sure is why they used it. On the surface, it was meant to show that the car has ample leg room in the back seat. But it also has obvious sexual implications.

Uh huh.

The author can't identify fonts (it's Fontdinerdoctcom) or the graphic styles of the era, but otherwise she's quite the critic.

People were becoming more open about sex in the 1960s and 1970s, especially after the publication of the 1972 book, “The Joy of Sex”. The free love movement of the hippie culture only added to it. So chances are, no one was too offended by this ad.

Possibly because this is the interior of a '57?

Now this is rather interesting example.

Hardy har, get it? STACKED. Mel Cooley about to get biz-zay (except no, he swung in another direction.)

Does that seem right to you? Start with the placement of the words. And let's look at them close up.

Whole lotta artifacting going on. Now, the copy mentions that the unit is "stacked and endowed," which makes me suspicious again.

Let's check out the author's insights:

Of course a built-in oven that is ‘stacked’ should be promoted using a busty model who is also stacked. This is another example of the ‘sex sells’ mindset that is still prevalent in advertising today. If an ad shows a beautiful, wealthy, or glamorous person, the underlying message is that the consumer will also feel beautiful, wealthy, and glamorous if they buy that product. Even if it is just an oven.

About the author:

Karen left the world of academic, quitting her job as a college professor to write full-time.

Too late to say "don't quit your day job," alas.

A piece on a reconstruction of an old diner. Can you spot the error?

The result is light, bright and warm. It's filled with historic photos and murals of Salt Lake City and Little America, including a massive photo of a crowd at the counter of the original Little America in Wyoming — a crowd that includes the company's founder, S.M. Covey, and Carol Holding, the widow of Earl Holding, who bought Little America in the 1950s.

The centerpiece of the new Coffee Shop is the lunch counter, complete with Bun-O-Matic bun warmers and Jetspray drink dispensers.

"This is what we used to have in the old days," said Box. "There aren't very many great American coffee shops anymore. That's what we want this to be.”

Right. No one who’d ever worked a restaurant back in the old days would make a mistake like that. I mean, I can understand missing the extra N, but not knowing it’s a coffee maker - I despair.

Then there’s this, about “Simply Irresistable.”

Let’s be honest, nothing sets the mood quite like Robert Palmer’s only notable song. Maybe you only know it for its constant presence in a variety of commercials and or its comically dated music video, but, either way, you’ve probably heard this particular catchy tune in one way or another. If you haven’t, you can hear the song here.

Only notable song. Meaning, “the only one I’ve heard of? Maybe like there are others? But I don’t know? And no one in the office could name one either without google?”

Wikipedia:

The 1986-produced music video (which uses the shorter single version of this song), directed by British photographer Terence Donovan,[5] was one of the most iconic of the era. The video features Palmer performing the song with an abstract "band", being a group of female models whose pale skin, heavy makeup, dark hair and seductive, rather mannequin-like expression follow the style of women in Patrick Nagel paintings.

Nagel; exactly. Of course it ended up as a Pepsi commercial.

Comically dated? Bless your heart. Everything gets dated, and it’s comically dated if you’re bringing your exquisitely up-to-date sensibilities to something you didn’t experience when it was new.