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...
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...
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...
SpeccyJam: The ZX Spectrum Game Dev Challenge
Through some random retweet I saw trickling through my Twitter stream I happened upon Speccy Jam, an annual event to create a game in one week with the rules being simply that the game can be for any platform and developed with any tool but must look like a genuine Sinclair ZX Spectrum game; specifically, the screen size (scalable) must be right and the colours used must be right with bonus points (there are no points) given if attribute blocks – the way every 8×8 block of pixels could only ever employ two colours (there’s a great discussion about this here) – is employed. I could describe how much joy I felt looking through the Speccy Jam forum and Twitter stream yesterday evening or I could post up a few screenshots of some of the games under development right now (although if you read this later then not really right now any longer) and I think it’s pretty clear which way I’m going to go here. Bratty Tim Inspired from Skool Daze if I had to guess and by Ants_And_Aphids. Pest Control Pete A classic-looking platformer by Retro Bungalow. The Accolade A little bit of isometric heaven and a very good-looking game even this early on from Juan. Bruce Leap A few puns abound as Bruce Leap tries to get Mai Wee back in this platformer from Gazzapper Games. Untitled Teddy Bear Game I’m sure this game by Stew Hogarth will have a name but right now it doesn’t although you are a teddy bear and you’re stealing things. Moon Unit Z Another gorgeous isometric game being developed for Speccy Jam by Lewis Lane. Lillian Gish A top down version of Lillian Gish in progress from developer Devi Ever. There are a load more ZX Spectrum-inspired games under development and last year’s entries can be found here too. I was too late in discovering the retro game development event this year but with a bit of luck I’ll remember for next year and have a stab at producing something truly awful and awesome at the same time, just like a real Spectrum...
Portsmouth In Colour, 1939
Film footage from 1939 of Portsmouth shot in colour. Interesting to see familiar and not-so-familiar parts of Portsmouth and quite amazing how much some of it has changed, some of it obviously lost to bombings during the war and other areas changed just as a matter of course. The film includes shots from the Brickwoods brewery, Clarence Pier amusements, the airport, one of the first festivals of the sea, a parade taking place in Southsea, and contestants in the Miss Portsmouth competition among other bits. Please note: some of the film is a little bit racy (quite surprising for the era) and may not be safe for...
1970s Euro Porn Style – Lehrmädchen-Report
Satellite TV came to the UK in the late 1980s and it wasn’t long before my parents ponied up the subscription fees and got a dish attached to the back of the house. And with that came a world of simultaneously truly awful and truly amazing programming from the far reaches of the Earth. But mainly mainland Europe. Compared to what we’d had to contend with before – four entire channels of mostly far less than 24 hours of viewing per day each – this was an incredible experience. Now we could watch quiz shows from Italy where we didn’t understand the questions or answers but liked the fact that scantily-dressed women featured heavily. Or news programmes from Spain where we didn’t understand a thing anyone was saying but there was a gorgeous presenter. Or soaps from France that we couldn’t comprehend but which had a heavy mix of beautiful female characters. You may be spotting a trend here. Of course, the main thing was staying up late enough so that the porn from the German or Italian channels would broadcast. Pornography on the television! What a world we lived in! I didn’t really realise it at the time but the adult films they showed were old, even then, dating from the 1970s and very much softer when compared to the sort of thing you can find online these days. Nudity and flaccidity and simulated sex acts were all you ever got but back then it was the best thing in the world. For reasons of nostalgia and mild perversion I decided to see if any of the 1970s films I remembered watching in the late hours of the 1980s were available online, what with us living in this glorious digital age. And they were! Which is handy or this would have been a rather pointless introduction. I tried watching one or two and even allowing for the continued incomprehension as to the plot and dialogue they were, quite frankly, awful. Always the danger I suppose. Still, there was one element of these classic porn films that I did enjoy: the fashion! The clothes! The cars! The house decors! The hair! The shoes! That may be more than one element but I’m going to group them all together under the heading of style. 1970s style? Yeah, you know I love that. This is potentially the first of a series of style showcases and mini reviews of 1970s European soft porn movies. Lehrmädchen-Report (1972) This is actually a movie I never saw on satellite television but the number of films featuring “report” at the end that I do remember seeing...
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