1961 Magazine Adverts
I love getting my hands on old things. Vintage vinyl and magazines are such wonderful sources for a glimpse into life in the past. Forget stuffy analysis from experts or people’s unreliable memories; if you want to know how things really were just stick on an old LP and flip over a publication from before you were born. Time machine time! Things I’ve been able to discern from reading a 1961-published, American magazine aimed at adult men (yeah, you know the sort) is that: jokes back then were just dreadful, stories back then were mind-numbingly dull, but women had curves in all the right places (yay!), and magazine adverts were simply wonderful. A vacuum pump to remove blackheads! It’s a bloody vacuum pump to remove blackheads! And you wonder why Americans are all so beautiful now? It’s because they had vacuum pumps to remove blackheads people! The Korean war was particularly harsh on the number of blacksmiths in America and this advert was just one prong of the fork that aimed to poke the art of blacksmithery back into the nation’s forefront. Does that sentence even make any sense? Thoughts of blacksmithing are confusing my brain! A rare example of a rival to Disney trying to get its foot in the door but here we can clearly see a fatal mistake in the advertising process: don’t give away your best example of cartoonery for everyone to see! Old Walt didn’t like what he saw and the originator of this ad was never heard from again. Without this advert we would have no Columbo. That’s right. Relieves drunkenness in five days? How drunk would you have to have been? I mean, it takes me a little longer than it used to but I’m still pretty much back to normal in under 18 hours. Either there was a lot of alcohol consumption back then or Americans were quite wimpy when it came to drinking. I’ve been to America and drunk their beers. I think it’s the latter one. The first rule in deciding whether to response to an advert claiming to improve your English is checking to see whether it conforms to good English. I found this ad to be very, ahem, entertaing. Do you see what I did there? Well, you probably need to have pretty decent English to spot it in the first place to be honest. A new way of prayer! This way of prayer proved to be far more effective than the other way of prayer which – as you may remember from school history lessons – didn’t help anybody ever and so was introduced into churches...
David Cameron, Children, and Porn
According to the Telegraph David Cameron and his Conservative party – the party that wants less regulation, less red tape, less pointless wastes of public money etc. – are planning to implement a means by which they can keep children away from porn sites. Or, to put it another way, the Conservatives want to censor the internet. Internet censorship. That’s the sort of thing they do in Iran and Syria and China and never, ever, ever here in our wonderful, democratic, enlightened society. And it’s not censorship if it’s called filtering. Always remember that. The bad guys censor; the good guys filter. Whether you want it or not. And cens… filtering works, people! It doesn’t block things it shouldn’t. This website, for instance, definitely isn’t blocked for being a porn site on some networks. I am, of course, lying. Despite not being a porn site this site is actually categorised as one by some web censoring software. Filtering software. Luckily, it’s a simple process to appeal being blocked incorrectly and it’s a simple matter to determine if you’re on the censorship list. I am, of course, lying again. Internet cens… filtering will be a totalitarian, opaque means of restricting access to anything that those in charge deem is unsuitable. That’s not paranoia; that’s an inevitability that comes from allowing those with a little control to get a little bit more. And then maybe a little bit more. And some more for your safety. And won’t someone think of the children? So, yes, the political party that doesn’t want to interfere needlessly wants to interfere needlessly and the only real reason seems to be to slip censorship into accepted usage because censorship equals power and politicians are nasty, power-hungry bastards at the best of times. Lucky for them then that the interfering, know-nothing busybodies of the NSPCC and similar “concerned” groups who think their opinions outweigh that of everyone else have come along to offer David Cameron and his cadre a way in. Let’s examine how this plan concocted by people who have no clue how the internet works will work. Ah, software we can all trust on every computer in the country! Nothing to worry about at all. Nothing can possibly go wrong. Under the plans, anyone turning on a new computer for the first time will be asked whether there are children in the house. […] Filters against pornography and self-harm sites will automatically be left on if parents just click through the options quickly and select ok to every question. As we’ve already seen, cens… filters can’t be trusted to do their jobs. A filter that knows...
Fashion Faves: Nimue Smit
I like Koto Bolofo‘s shoot for Dior featuring Dutch model Nimue Smit – if I didn’t then I wouldn’t have posted this under the title of Fashion Faves after all – but I do have to wonder where the Alice in Wonderland theme really fits in with what the fashion house is trying to sell. May contain rabbits? You don’t have to be doing drugs to like our stuff but it might help? Who knows? Odd choice of theme aside, this is a lovely shoot. There’s obviously been a lot of thought put into the design elements; the scale of the set props and the surreal addition of swans or stacked chairs or butterflies massed on a tree fits with whatever it is that Dior is attempting to convey. Some great use of light and smoke effects – some in-shot, some clearly in post-processing – round off a great job by Koto Bolofo and Nimue...
Old Hip Hop Triple
Three videos of some old hip hop music. Remember: old hip hop music is the best type of hip hop music. Double XX Posse – Headcracker Tuff Crew – What You Don’t Know King Bee – Back By Dope...
Composition
Sometimes when I'm shooting I pay very particular attention to the composition of the shot. Is there a diagonal I can get into the frame somehow (I do so like a nice diagonal)? Can I get a colour match or clash between foreground and background objects? If I take this shot will I get arrested? That sort of thing. I say sometimes. I mean practically never of course. I'm just not that thoughtful when it comes to photography. This picture is a case in point: did I line up the shot so that the pavement ran from one corner to the other? Like hell I did! Did I notice that the umbrella colours matched the tiles on the road and the advertising board in the rear? You bet your sweet ass I didn't give it a second's thought! Did I wonder if the old woman would hear my shutter firing, turn around, attempt to strike me with the tip of her brolly, force me to defend myself with lethal force, and lead to the spending of the Christmas period answering probing questions in a police station? Briefly, admittedly, but that's true of almost every shot I take. Google+: View post on...
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