Ridgid Tools Calendars
I’m not sure what route I took while clicking along the information superhighway (are all the kids still calling it that these days?) but I ended up in a little town of George Petty pin up girl artwork, liked what I saw, asked around, and then stumbled upon a calendar he’d produced for a company called Ridgid. You know how it is then; you have a few drinks and before you know it you’re staring at another calendar, only this one’s from the 1970s, not the 1950s, and you’re quite impressed by just how things have changed, yet stayed the same. All of which is a poorly prosaic way of saying I’d like to showcase some of those images from the calendars right here. It’s the sort of thing I do. These images came from these two Flickr albums: 1975-6 Ridgid Tools Calendar and Blog Photos but there are plenty of other sources. 1953 Calendar The 1953 calendar for Ridgid Tools is the one by artist George Petty. The 1950s was a time of innuendo. Why look! It’s a small woman with a large tool between her legs! This woman is touching a knob at the end of a long shaft. What can the underlying message be? Astride a tool, ready to get it all lubricated while a knob is pressed up against her backside. Filth! Well now, that posture can’t be good for her back. Health and safety rules were clearly different back then. And working with machinery in ballet shoes? Things really have changed. 1975-76 Calendar The two year calendar for Ridgid Tools was photographed by Peter Gowland. Gone was the subtle innuendo of earlier years; in the 1970s the important thing was to show some skin and encourage blue collar workers to pin the calendar on the wall and get that brand name screwed into the brain. Of course, if you could get a woman to get her hands gripping the rod of some tool then that was good too. The challenge with the 1970s photos is guessing just what the actual tool is that’s being promoted. Take this one, for example: if I didn’t know any better I’d assume it was some kind of plasma weapon as used by warrior women of some pretty awesome bikini planet. “I need to measure something curved, something that would easily cover a person, but is there such a tool? Hang on! Didn’t I see the perfect thing on my Ridgid Tools calendar? I did!” Another mystery tool that I’m going to assume is a high tech bit of equipment for clubbing fish to death because why else would...
Mastertronic Games
This link – Mastertronic Bestsellers – will show you three charts showing the top-selling Mastertronic games across all of its released formats as well as total number of releases year-on-year for the various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum during the peak years of Mastertronic’s game releases and it’s nice to see just how popular such titles as Finders Keepers and Molecule Man – two of my favourites – really...
1970s Porno Style
If you ever take a look at the pictures of a pornographic magazine from the 1970s – and if I know you half as well as I think I do then I know you do – then you’ll no doubt have been blown away by the awesome pre-sex fashions and sex-location styling on display. Let’s take a quick look at some truly amazing displays from the golden age of porno publications. It’s a party – you can tell from that one decoration on the wall – in a time when it was perfectly okay to expose your fellow diners to cigarette smoke, with a mix of casual and smart casual wear on display, and the two stand out things for me are the gentleman’s shirt in the second photo (he’s clearly taken off his jacket sometime between the first and second ones, a sure indication things are warming up) and the candles. Look how thin they are! Who uses those candles these days? Aren’t you supposed to use those candles to light other candles? Oh well. And I’m not even going to guess what he’s trying to do in that second picture either. Some things just don’t have a modern equivalence. One man and three women has to mean sexy sex is mere moments away but cast that thought aside for one moment and let your eyes gaze lovingly on the half-height wood paneling. Heavenly. And yet even that beauty of 1970s design is overshadowed by our male protagonist’s suit. When you combine a suit of that colour and that apparent fabric with sideburns of that majesty you know you’re looking at a sex god in human form. Notice too that all the women are sporting bold necklaces. In the 1970s that was a sure sign that women were up for a little bit of how’s your father. Or that they really liked necklaces. One of those two. “Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie!” laughed the blonde as she perused the photo album of a recent trip to Amsterdam on her friend’s lap. “See, now I love your green dress – I really do – but it’s just a little plain for this era. You need to find yourself something with a little more daring; a little more wow!; a little more horrific clashing of patterns with each and every thing around you. Something like I’ve got on. Hey! Is that Ted’s arse in the corner by the canal? Great necklace, by the way! Fancy a bit of how’s your father?” It’s the same setting and the same brunette (admittedly sporting something a little more suitable for the period; I’m so...
Massenet’s Cendrillon
Out of nowhere while flicking around the TV channels yesterday I spotted that an opera whose name I didn’t recognise was about to start. Every now and then I like to pretend I’ve got a smidgeon of class about me so I settled down and watched from start to finish a performance of Massenet’s Cendrillon as played out at the Royal Opera House in 2011. I was captivated by it. This was the first non-English opera I’d ever watched and it was enthralling. Beautiful acting and singing performances by all involved, clever set design, some gorgeous outfits, and a really nice version of the Cinderella story. I’ve no idea if the video I’m embedding here will get yanked at some point but it’s a part of the third act which takes place on the rooftops and sees both Cendrillon and Prince Charming bewitched by a spell cast by the gorgeous fairy godmother that means they can’t see one another; when the spell is finally broken I actually had goosebumps and a slight welling of tears when watching it for the first time. Cendrillon was played by Joyce DiDonato, the fairy godmother by Eglise Gutiérrez, and Prince Charming – who I thought looked a bit effeminate at the time – turns out to be acted by Alice Coote, so that explains that. It doesn’t quite explain why he looks like Father Dougal McGuire though. Such an enjoyable opera, we might just look into taking a trip to London at some point and checking one out in the...
Old Magazine Adverts
I’ve got a thing for old magazine adverts whether they’re the full page glossy ones or, as in this case, those small ones grouped together enticing people to part with money in return for things that invariably don’t live up to their promises. Here are a few I found in an old English language version of a 1970s Spanish...
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