By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Friday, May 25
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Here's an undated ad from "Sugar Information, Inc" (our old friends), warning mothers that if they include their kids in their sugar-free, dieting lifestyles, they will be depriving the poor kiddlees of vital sugar and exposing them to "exhaustion." Obviously, this was before the cancer scares and other stuff about artificial sweeteners, because surely that's the major reason to keep your kids away from artificial sweeteners. I love the fact that they recommend sugar for dieters, too: "gives you the va-va-voom you need for all those exercises!"
Sugar!
By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 am Thursday, May 24
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A 20-year-old photo spread from pioneering cyberculture zine Mondo 2000 asks the musical question: "R U a cyberpunk?" Bruce Sterling, who was, in fact, a cyberpunk, answers: "Since 20 years have passed, contemporary people will fail to realize that this was a comical self-parody."
ru cyberpunk
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:06 am Tuesday, May 22
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Legendary hardware hacker Jeri Ellsworth (world's most awesome C64 hacker and all round happy mutant), entertained attendees at the Maker Faire with her brilliant Commodore 64 bass keytar, which she played while wearing rollerskates.
Ellsworth noted via Twitter that it uses the SID chip and is based on an FPGA - a re-implementation of the Commodore-64 computer using reconfigurable logic chips. See the video below for an overview of the instrument from Ellsworth.
What’s not obvious from the photo above is that Ellsworth wears a portable amp and rocks the C64 Bass Guitar on roller skates. <3
Jeri Ellsworth & Her Commodore 64 Bass Guitar Thing
(via Waxy)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:39 pm Monday, May 21
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On How to Be a Retronaut, an invigorating, 1910s-1920s gallery of winsome, partially unclothed lasses posed with typewriters. Hummina. 23 and/or skiddoo! They're ganked from marvellous Virtual Antique Typewriter Museum.
Typewriter Erotica c. 1920s
(via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:41 am Wednesday, May 16
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Our own Ed Piskor's Wizzywig -- a graphic novel that is a fictionalized account of a Kevin Mitnick-type hacker and his run-ins with the law -- will shortly be available as a beautiful hardcover from the good folks at Top Shelf Comix, who put together the excellent book trailer you see above. Here are my reviews of the original single-chapter volumes:
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first two volumes of Ed Piskor's comic-book historical hacker drama, Wizzywig. Wizzywig is the story of Kevin "Boingthump" Phenicle, a fictional hacker who's part Mitnick, part Poulsen, and part mythological. Boingthump is a preternaturally bright, badly socialized kid who discovers a facility for technology that's egged on by his only pal, "Winston Smith," a would-be Abbie Hoffman who is obsessed with the potential to use Boingthump's discoveries to monkeywrench the machine.
But soon enough, their roles are reversed, as Kevin's relentless pursuit of knowledge and power scares Winston so much that he tries (without success) to put the brakes on Boingthump's crazy ride through the phone system and the nascent Internet. The story blends fiction and fact, dropping in a Blue Box-selling Jobs and Wozniak (Boingthump picks the trunk-lock on their car and steals a Blue Box) and Cap'n Crunch, along with plenty of fictional BBS scenesters and grumpy computer-store owners. The backgrounds are filled with nostalgia PCs -- Atari 400s, Apple ///s -- and old Bellcore manuals.
The illustration and storytelling style reminds me a lot of Harvey Pekar (with whom he's collaborated on American Splendor), jumping backwards and forwards in time, switching points of view, going inside and outside of the characters' heads. The first two volumes are PHREAK and HACKER, with two more (FUGITIVE and INMATE) planned. Piskor prints and sells the comics himself (the books are quite handsome) and he's got extensive free previews online. At $15 each, with all the money going straight into the creator's pocket, what's not to like?
Wizzywig
By Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm Tuesday, May 15
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The May 27, 1922 issue of The Evening Independent carried a story about moonshiners wearing "cow shoes" to trick revenuers -- rather than leaving suspicious footprints leading up to their secret stills, they'd leave innocent-looking hoofprints in the dirt and grass. The New Yorker's "Photo Booth" had a good snap of one of the shoes (above).
Shiners Wear "Cow Shoes"
(via Kottke)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:50 pm Sunday, May 13
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One more M-Day Vintage Ad: a Philip Morris piece from a 1956 Saturday Evening Post celebrating its new packaging by inviting an association between cuddling a newborn and smoking.
There's a good case to be made for tobacco companies as the original sinners of corporatism, with their development of this kind of advertising, not to mention their key contributions to self-serving junk science. There's a (dotted, convoluted) line joining up the MMR scare, climate denialism, and this industry's Mad Men, sentimental illustrators, and tame scientists.
In earlier days...
By Cory Doctorow at 2:00 pm Sunday, May 13
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Another Vintage Ads gem for Mother's Day: this bit of corporate futurism from the energy sector.
Mother's Day
By Cory Doctorow at 12:34 pm Sunday, May 13
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For $110, Etsy seller JamesBit will custom-paint a Zelda-themed faux fire to size for display in your decorative fireplace.
Zelda Fireplace Art
(via Wil Wheaton)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:49 am Sunday, May 13
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Oh that scamp. Poor Mom. Check out that beatific expression.
Mother's Day
By Cory Doctorow at 9:07 pm Friday, May 11
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Harry Clarke's 1919 illustrations for Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" are absolutely wonderful, some of the best Poe interpretations this diehard Poefan has seen. 50Watts has them at super-hi-rez, too. Looks like you can buy a 2008 facsimile edition for about $26.
Harry Clarke, Illustrations for E. A. Poe
(via How to Be a Retronaut)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:17 pm Thursday, May 10
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Mental Floss's Rob Lammle has researched an admirably thorough history of The Animaniacs, one of my all-time favorite cartoons.
Of the Warners, the voice of Wakko was the most difficult to cast. During auditions, the producers said they were looking for “wacky,” so all the actors delivered a voice that was over-the-top crazy, but none were the right fit. On the last day of auditions, Ruegger brought his 1990 Almanac to the office, hoping to find some inspiration that might shake things up. Many wacky Wakko’s later, they still didn’t have the right voice. So during their last appointment of the morning, with voice actor Jess Harnell, Ruegger opened the almanac to a list of celebrities and asked Harnell to do his best impression of Elvis, Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, and other notable names. When the Beatles came up, Harnell proceeded to do every one of the Fab Four so well you could actually tell which individual band member he was mimicking at the moment. However, it was Harnell’s Ringo that struck a chord with the producers, so after a few tweaks, that became the voice of Wakko.
To promote Animaniacs before the show’s premiere, a giant balloon in the shape of Yakko was placed on top of the water tower on the Warner Bros. lot. Unfortunately, no one told Bob Daley, who ran the studio. When he pulled into work that morning, he thought someone had put a bad Mickey Mouse balloon on the tower and ordered it removed. The inflatable Yakko was in place for less than 12 hours, and then popped shortly after he came down. Writer Paul Rugg was able to snap a photo to prove it happened.
After the balloon incident, Daley worked to ensure no one else would mistake the Warners for Mickey. Daley decided that Yakko and Wakko were too smooth and rounded. So while he watched, he had Ruegger add side whiskers to the drawings, which he felt would prevent confusion – and potential legal action. Ruegger and Warner Bros. Animation president Jean MacCurdy had to rush back to the animation studio with the changes, because the cartoon was already being drawn, with some segments in the can. You can see the Before Whiskers and After Whiskers comparison below:
Way More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Animaniacs
By Cory Doctorow at 5:10 pm Wednesday, May 9
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Thing-a-day guy Noah Scalin sez, "Artist Betsy VanDeusen created this wonderful Star Wars-ified version of a classic Elvgren pinup as part of her yearlong daily project!
You can see the rest of her work on her blog, and read a recent interview about her project on my own blog."
She explains, "Starting on 2/27/2012, and working through 2/27/2013, I intend to work on my art daily. It will all be tied in to the "Retro Pinup" theme somehow. The important thing to me is the daily practice of working. I'm not necessarily interested in creating "finished pieces" on a daily basis (Taking a work to completion may take the accumulated efforts of a week, a month, or more- if the piece demands it). I just have so many ideas that I never follow up on, and this project gives me the incentive and excuse to focus on those ideas on a daily basis."
The Princess Leia Pinup.
(Thanks, Noah!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:38 am Wednesday, May 9
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Carl Pyrdum's 2010 essay on the internal logic of Gothic manuscript illuminations uses a delightful series of illustrations and sprites from Super Mario Brothers. History at its finest:
If you look carefully (the image above–and all the images in this post–should expand if you click it), you can see that the two initial capitals on the page form separate platforms, not quite touching. The uppermost capital provides support for two vine-like borders, one growing upward and another that downward toward the lower capital. And the vines in turn provide support for little birds who sit atop them.
If it turns out that the hound can leap, too, the rabbit still might be able to get away if he can convince Mario to give up one of his precious oak leaves. Flying creatures are allowed to ascend into the open white space of the medieval manuscript page, as this moth is doing in the top left margin of this very same page:
The poor insect enthusiast beneath can only gaze up wistfully at the moth, unable to get any higher on the page because he’s run out of platforms.
Now, this attention to gravity is a general tendency, not an ironclad rule. If you poke around Gothic manuscripts long enough you’ll find many exceptions, but probably a lot fewer than you might expect. In fact, I’ve found that the fancier the manuscript, the more consistently its artists tend to respect gravity’s role on the page. Deluxe manuscripts like the Yale Lancelot or the Bodleian Alexander are scrupulous about making sure everything is resting on something that’s attached to something that’s attached back to one of the anchor points. In fact, the better manuscripts purposefully play with the expectation of downward gravity, creating elaborate and fanciful connections between the objects on the page. Next time I get around to this subject, I’ll try to show you some of my favorite examples.
Gravity in the Margins (Mmm… Marginalia #55)
(via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:20 am Wednesday, May 9
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MovieWeb's alternate title sequence for The Walking Dead is set to the theme from Growing Pains and expertly edited/titled to give it the air of a 1980s sitcom, an effect that it achieves in spades. I would watch this sitcom: "The departure of Frank Darabont has seen The Walking Dead go in a whole new direction. This new intro for season 2.5 seems to shine a light on the character dynamics of this ragtag group of zombie survivors and the impending daddy issues that Laurie's pregnancy is sure to bring."
The Walking Dead (2010 - Present): Season 2 Alternate Title Sequence
(via Neatorama)
