wasting bandwidth since 2005

This one goes out to G. He turned me on to a giant stash of government comics, pamphlets, and posters that is a goldmine of awesomeness. This little example of 50′s propaganda is from a 1951 Duck and Cover comic that schools passed out to the kids to educate them about what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Ah the good old days. No ridiculous color coded terror threat. No rush on duct tape to seal your home against bio terrorism. Just a simple duck and cover to protect yourself from the horrors of the communist nuclear attack. As long as you could toss your ass under a desk or table or maybe a drainage ditch there was nothing to fear. You would still be able to shake off the debris and launch everything you had at the godless russkies. Nothing like putting a good spin on it. Of course if you weren’t incinerated into the great beyond in the initial blast the radiation poisoning would have mutated you into a shapeless mass of flesh and bone, covered in open wounds. But that didn’t quite make for such a upbeat comic for the kiddies.

Masto.

Below is some helpful info about nuclear attack from the Department of Defense.

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This week is a photo I ran across from a set of early 60′s shots of Disneyland. Back in the day they had these colored light fountains in front of the buildings in Tomorrowland and other various places. Now maybe it’s just me but as a kid it seemed that every fountain had colored lights and lots of places had fountains. You just don’t see this any more except for maybe Vegas. I got to admit, after seeing this photo, I kind of miss it. It’s a cool look. A little other-worldly and relaxing.

Wow I must have had a stressful week if I am waxing poetic about color lighted fountains.

Ah….. look at the pretty lights.

Masto.

This week is something I ran across this last weekend. In the search for old band photos (see sidebar under rock n’ roll) I was going through a stack of negatives. I ran across some that I didn’t know I even had. They must have been from my roommate at the time because the negs also had pics of his girlfriend and family. Among these shots was also us moving in and me working on a painting for a art class I was taking at the time. That’s where this photo comes in. I don’t remember ever seeing this pic but that might have a lot to do with the fact that at the time when you had your photos developed anything that was questionably a sub-par photo was not printed so you didn’t eat the cost of printing the crap you had at the beginning or end of a roll or something you screwed up. This neg looks like it would have fallen into that category.

My big idea was to do a painting you had to stand 100 yards away from to see what it was. Well that’s how it started. Then realizing you would, at best, be 20 feet away I altered my idea into something more workable. This is pre-Photoshop. I found a picture of a girl in some fashion magazine that I wanted to used and spent countless hours half toning different shots at different size scales to get the large dot that I wanted. Shot it on film, then projected on to the canvas, to paint it in. It was huge. That is my shoulder in the picture and I am 6’2″ and much closer to the camera. The canvas was over 6′ wide. It came close to being finished then painted over in some other mad idea I wanted to try.

Chalk this one up to capturing a moment. With nothing to show for all the work years later. At least I have this to remember the late evenings standing on my bed to paint dots on a large canvas. The act of doing it was enjoyable. I just wish I had something more to show for all the work.

Artists lament.

Masto.

A distribution flyer for one of Midways electro-mechanical arcade games. Nothing like trying to take one of their old target shooter gun games and hipping it up for the kids. I guess by the sixties no cool kid wanted to be seen dead shooting up some tin star, western cowboy, game so what do you do… hmmm… I know they can pop the heads off of stupid looking aliens in flying saucers. Seems everything had a flying saucer theme back in the day and folks ate this crap up. Now I will give it kudos for having a great time period illustration. The colors alone are a grabber. As much as this might suck for a shooter arcade game (except for the part that it was in black light, because everything in black light is kind of cool no matter how hard it blows) it does make for a cool flyer.

This one is for the little green men.

Masto.

Where to even start. My guts cramping up just thinking of baked beans and home fried corn dogs. Well at least I hope those are battered and fried dogs. They could be battered and fried… ( fill in blank ) just about anything. The important part of this pic is next time I need some way to hold my newly fried corn… whatever, and it’s condiments, a head of lettuce fills the bill. The sad part is that after eating the beans and corn things that bit of roughage being used  a center piece would be a gastro-intestinal help.

Dig in!

Masto.