Monday, October 20, 2014

random return

hello there

well, with not all that much of interest for you i figured if you were checking in here to see what's new i had better do something. time for some more random images, then.

what years this time? entirely at random, i have gone for 1972, 1983 and 1991. well, when i say entirely at random, a quick check suggested i had not done these years before. so, well, and why not i guess, here we go.

and what better place could there be to start off than 1983? if you were for some reason wondering what the average college girl looked like in that year, well, here you go.



yeah, i am not sure that this is precisely what the average college girl looked like, but this magazine that i grabbed the above from assured me that it was. close enough, probably.

moving on to 1991, then, and someone called Admiral AIDS was to be found giving a speech to all of his suspiciously named generals and, as it were, privates, look you see. it seems that the military was at war with someone called Captain Condom. that's not as unusual a surname as you might think.



i get why it was important at the time of 1991 - as it is now - to encourage the use of condoms. i am just not entirely convinced that likening AIDS and other nookie related diseases to the military was all that bright an idea. well, i suppose it could be if you really hate the military, look you see.

it would be fair to say that many of you have only read this far in the hope that of the things from 1972 i have included something that is astrology related. let it not be me that disappoints you, then, with this outrageous image. 


am i big on all this astrology stuff? not really. i mean, i don't have anything against telescopes and all that, good luck to those who use them. i just can't see me getting one and using it any time soon, let alone read the details of it in them columns they have in fancy magazines.

where is it, you might ask, that a gent went for a seductive and colourful Italian atmosphere if he found himself in Fulham or Kensington, two of the more refined areas of London, in the year 1983. as it turns out, one went to the appropriate, relevant and nearest of Barbarella Restaurants. as long as it was before 1am.



ace that they were both fully air-conditioned; it is terrible to arrive at a restaurant named after a Jane Fonda film and discover that it is only partially air-conditioned i guess.

i speak of the place in the past tense, which is amiss of me. for all i know these places are still on the go, seducing those seeking Italian atmosphere of colour. i shall have speaks with Spiros, see if he can't take a stroll past these places to see if either or both are still open.

1972 must have been an amazing time, man. look, you see, they allowed us to have adverts for cigarettes, giving people the choice as to whether or not they should be stupid enough to be lured into smoking.



yes, indeed i remain one of the stupid ones, as i in spectacular style still manage to gloriously fail at that whole quit / cut down considerably thing. sorry. and oh yes, Camel fags are boss.

the kids of today, for some reason. believe that "mobile gaming" is something invented for their generation, and all began with that Angry Birds thing. this is nonsense. here, from the glory of 1983, are some of the class handheld games we had for entertainment.



much better than the rubbish today, that lot. for a start, they were their own, purpose built devices. today it is cheap and nasty, where you just keep putting different games on the same device. what a con!

computer technology, and computer technology prices, from the past are always interesting. let's have a gander, then, at the specials on offer from Computer Junction back in 1983.



yeah, its' not too clear, but as far as i can work out that is indeed $1995 that they want you to pay for a 5MB "cartridge drive". blimey, best the one mp3 track you store on it be worth it. and, presumably, either short or simply ripped at a low quality.

now, apart from the obvious, i am not too sure what's going on in this next picture. actually, i am, as the article had the headline "John & Yoko". crazy times, it seems at Lennon & Ono gigs in 1972.



the above, i believe, actually explains a lot about why Spiros is a big Plastic Ono Band fan, to the extent that he will not have a word said against Ringo on the off chance that someone on one of his albums once played on a Plastic Ono Band record.

protection against fire is, to my mind, always a pretty good idea. if you can have it in place, well then have it would be my approach to it. if you were to do such a thing in 1991, this is probably what you had.



yeah, the quality of these random images are perhaps not as great as previous editions are they? oh well, i am trying, and maybe someone really likes fire stuff and finds that one interesting. me? no.

at this moment in time it is, for some reason, incredibly trendy to say how much you have always loved the band Genesis, and to pretend that they have always been treasured, worshipped and appreciated. the same is true of Led Zeppelin as and when one or two of the surviving members stick their heads up, i suppose.

anyway, a newspaper appearance, no less, from 1972. yes, an appearance by Genesis. in an actual newspaper.



remember this was from a time when newspapers were important - no internet, no 24 hour news channels, nothing like that. what was in newspapers was supposed to be of exceptional importance and great relevance. was Genesis? apparently.

also in 1972, Les Dawson. he is a chap that, no doubt, has as many fans as Phil Collins out of Genesis does, due to the incredible number of similarities between the two.

here is some sort of cartoon thing he was in during 1972. except this is not of the cartoon itself, but rather the photograph which indicated that the cartoon was to follow.



now then, actual proper nostalgia time.

this one is from 1983, but i am convinced this was available before that year.



i can't quite place it, or say for certain, but i am convinced that my sister had one of them Major Morgan ones, and that we all used to play on it. it was that as being the case, or otherwise someone we knew had one and we borrowed it.

was it any good? i am guessing yes. i cannot remember all that much, except the strong sense that i have seen it before. i probably broke it too. sorry, i could have, and should have, been a much better brother.

what toy cars were available in 1991? ones driven by white dudes, it seems.



i was never all that fussed about toy cars, to tell the truth. well, of course cool ones, like Batman ones. and tracks for toy cars, where you could do class ramps with them. so yeah, i probably was fussed about them, now that i think a bit.

a panda from 1983? why not.



sure, it looks cute, but have you seen one tackle a bamboo tree in the wild? f***** vicious things, panda bears are. people seem to forget the "bear" part of their name when discussing how cute they are. the legendary skit off of Who Dares Wins about pandas was closer to the truth than heavily edited wildlife shows, believe me. same is true of koala bears, but with eucalyptus. as far as i know they do not even know what bamboo is in Australia, let alone have it. the mind boggles as to what a koala would do to it.

sorry for the amount of Spiros references here, but my abiding memory of Spiros throughout the 90s was his love of ski outfits as a fashion statement. i only met him in 1993, but here is what presumably he would have been wearing in 1991.



why is it that ski outfits are most commonly white? does that not make it all the more difficult to find errant skiing types who have fallen in the snow? perhaps it is deliberate, as in "if you can't ski and you fall then you deserve not to be found and the slow death that follows". i would make ski outfits black or pink or something, so it's easier to spot people. also, the trees that keep jumping out and hitting celebrities would notice with more ease and, presumably, jump out of the way. since, for some reason, celebrities appear to expect the trees to move.

back to London in 1983 and oh look, another club for Spiros to go and see if it is still a going concern. he will like this one, as he is big on total nightclub scene things, and very much a man that appreciates excellent cuisine.



if it is still going and they allow Spiros to have the private use of the club, that will be amazing, man. handy that they accept all major credit cards too, since Spiros refuses to use a minor one.

is Spiros particularly a nightclub man? he was, once. weren't we all? these days he is more at home with a bit of greco-roman wrestling, i suppose, to keep fit, and he does do all that kung fu stuff. his ideal evening these days, i suppose, is either spent in a Turkish bath with gents who would otherwise be in uniform, or it is spent under a bush, intoxicated, with soiled pants and mostly spent engaged in an argument with himself.

still in 1983 then, and the wild enthusiasm that anticipated the release of a game based on the film ET meant that it featured on the front of Italian magazines.



the game turned out, as it happens, to be not quite as good as the film was. this was a great pity. i believe some sort of film or documentary is on the way about that particular fiasco, so let me not steal too much of their thunder by telling you what happened exactly. but it is something that did not end at all well for Atari.

finally (hooray!) for your viewing pleasure, what wood accessories would have set you back in 1991.



them cordless driver drill things look pretty smart. i have a class one that Lance got me, still going strong. and, of course, my "mega" drill set.

no, i have had a think, and i cannot think of anything else to say of wood, so there you go. we are done here.

right, until something else of interest crops up, that's it!

hope one or two of these images have been of some use to someone, even if on a cursory, curious level.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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