may be random

hi there

i might well have got a little bit too clever and ambitious with the amount of pictures i have assembled for this random post. if that turns out to be the case then you will know, look you see, for it will eventually be all images and very few words. a number of you, i know, would consider this to be a great improvement in comparison to other posts.

for some reason these random factor posts tend to be popular. from my perspective whether 1 or 100 of you, the people, read things here makes little difference to me, but it is jolly nice to be able to throw out there stuffs that the peoples wants to sees. sorry, that went all Hobbit, that last sentence.

if there's any sort of prevalent or  otherwise dominant theme this time around it would seem to be, looking at the pictures i have selected, cinema. the movies. not deliberate, and of course not directly relevant to this first one.

what is this first picture? an advert for some brown shoes off of someone called Bally. yeah, as if you needed me to say this, this advert is from the 70s.

for some reason brown was "it" in the 70s, man. brown shoes, brown pants, brown leather waistcoats. if you wanted credibility and acceptability in the rock world, at the least, you needed to perform in a brown leather waistcoat at some point.

my own experiences with brown shoes are limited to the last time we were in an odd numbered year, when default rather than design matters meant that i had to experiment with a cowboy look. public displays of this cowboy look were, for the most part, limited to train travels between Johannesburg and Pretoria, with the occasional sojourn to the wastelands of the place they call Sandton. for those unaware of what a Sandton is, it is an area generally considered to have more money than the remainder of Africa combined, unless there are certain pockets of Africa that are really, really good at hiding the money they have. which, i suspect, they are.

i have no quarrel, by the way, with brown shoes. many people like wearing them, and i wish them well and much joy in doing so. i will drag mine out of storage one day, perhaps.

onwards, then, to the world of film for the first time. a poster, from the early 80s (possibly 80 itself) for a film that i have nothing but fond memories of. 

it was the case that The Black Hole, to my single digit age eyes, just looked stylishly awesome. them flying tin robots were boss, as were the sleek black bad guy robots. the interesting thing in the above, looking back, is just how understated Disney were with their branding back then. you have to kind of hunt down the fact that it was, and remains, a Disney film.

a look at the beach they have at Blackpool, as it was in 1977 or thereabouts? why not.

i quite like the convenience of it all, looking at the above. there are not many places in the world where one can now get both shrimps and a donkey ride in such close proximity to each other. i am getting old, for i think such simplistic and easy pleasures are now a very good thing indeed and well worth changing the world back to being like. 

back to film, then, and a cinematic work that has developed something of a reputation of being a masterpiece over the last 30 years. that would be because it is precisely that.

i have made this entry form as large as i can so that some of you can, if you so wish, cut out this page of the internet and post it in the hope of winning some very smart sounding Blade Runner items. that your entry would be close to 33 years late, and be off to a magazine that probably, in all likelihood, does not exist anymore should not be seen as a barrier to your wishes to win this.

i bet those prize packs are worth a fortune now, if indeed any of them are intact. most of the photos in the making of magazine were probably, i would suspect, used in that class Future Noir novel, or indeed in the expansive and exhaustive documentaries that came along with the DVD and Blu Ray releases of the film in fancy box sets.

the badges, though, are i would suspect something of a rare commodity these days. i wonder what the seven featured? no doubt one had that Harrison Ford icon, and another probably just said 'Blade Runner' in that fancy font they use on the title. boss if one of the badges was of the Tyrell Corp logo.

and i know for a fact of at least one person who would very much like a picture of Harrison Ford, it being glossy all the better. yes, Maria, you.

no, i am not going to do a google or an ebay on this prize. i will either draw a blank, or i will see an image of it that shall make my magpie eyes hungry for the prize. i will just leave it that 100 fortunate people won this, and i trust that they enjoyed their experiences of winning it and owning it. should they still all own their sets, well then so much the better.

 those of you reading this on a phone will be experiencing a "mobile optimised" version, so the text comes either before or after the pictures. those of you reading this on a proper computer, however, will be aware that i insist on lacing the text around the images. sometimes it is tough to come up with enough barely relevant words for each picture, as is the case here.

a recent post gave an insight into Sweden, as viewed by The Stranglers. what about those people in Denmark, who are not quite as far away from Sweden as certain people in Sweden might like them to be?

to my knowledge The Stranglers have never spoken publicly of their thoughts and feelings about Denmark, but this picture, at the least, does confirm for you - categorically and comprehensively - that ten pin bowling was indeed a thing in 1970s Denmark.

do they still do ten pin bowling in Denmark? probably, but i would imagine not to any great levels of success. The Big Lebowski, after all, was not set in downtown Denmark, was it?

the exciting thing about ten pin bowling in Denmark, i suppose was that it was engaged in by people who when not bowling were probably off slaughtering pigs in order to make bacon. Danish bacon does have something of a reputation for being the finest in the world. which is not of all that much relevance to my Jewish friends around the world, or my Muslim ones for that matter, but none of them i am sure would get cross at the fact that i really do rather enjoy a good bit of bacon from time to time. so yeah, Sweden might have invented that Joey out of Europe for the kids, but Denmark showed the world what levels could be reached with bacon. i know which one i like the most.

on the subject of pigs, research and questions into such thing - not  carried out or in any way done by me, thank you very much indeed, suggests that human flesh tastes exceptionally like pork. this kind of makes sense, because i believe current medical thinking indicates that a human could function with the organs off of a pig transplanted in them.

there is probably some sort of law i am violating by putting this advert here, but what the heck. it's well over 20 years old, and is clearly being sold for the humour value of it. a very dark sense of humour, for sure, but each to their own.

i actually pulled this image off of an edition of Fangoria i stumbled upon online, or if you like on the web. nice one.

no doubt many others out there join me in having nothing but the fondest of fond memories of Fangoria. it was class. in the 80s, when the Thatcher government basically made sure that any and all horror films were either banned or cut to ribbons, in the pages of Fangoria we found all of the most gruesome images from the films that we were not allowed to see. not that Fangoria was particularly easy to get - W H Smith did not sell it. i may well be wrong, but i seem to recall that it was in the newsagents sort of thing at the bus station where you would find this on the rack.

for the sake of clarity, please do not purchase the book advertised above, and please do not go ahead and cook or eat anyone. leave that to them Ewok things off of that film.

speaking of that film, behold, the greatness of Shatner as Kirk.

the most peculiar thing about the above image is that it is a promotional sticker sort of thing from 1976. this is strange as , so far as a i know, Star Trek wasn't much of a thing in 1976. the TV series had long since finished, and with no Star Wars released yet to get film studios all excited about space, there would not, i would have thought, have been all that many Trekkies around. i note with interest that i don't get a spell check warning on Trekkies.

a little bit of a cheeky saucy image for you? sure, why not. there are a few coming up that have some sauce, as it happens, but for now be content with the Arnold in this, i presume at least, promotional picture of the magnificence of Conan The Barbarian. 

that is indeed Valeria with Conan right there. they look a bit too chilled and posed for this to be a still from the film itself, so i will assume it's an on the set, staged promo one.

absolutely boss, Conan is, and not just for the bit where Conan punches a horse or camel or something in the face. it's just a quality exercise in brilliant storytelling with all the mayhem of sex and violence you could ever wish for.

if i remember right, an oxymoron is defined as two words or a phrase which causes a contradiction. there are many flippant examples i could make up here, but i won't as that will just upset someone somewhere. besides, i don't really need to, for this next image in many ways personifies the ideals and meaning of just what an oxymoron is.

i do not doubt or dispute that crochet has an important part to play in any modern, progressive and civilised society, but there is a difference, i would like to think, between that significance of importance and it being for some a matter of fantasy. i would like to think that even the most ardent and dedicated crochet exponent would have fantasies that stretch far beyond those humble borders.

70s fashions made an appearance in the first picture of this post, and here 70s fashions appear again, somewhere around half way through it all. just have a look at how dapper this one dude is in these different outfits, or indeed how smart this set of triplets look.

only the smart gear in the middle is so boring and conservative that you would get away with wearing it today without attracting peculiar, jealous looks or the attentions of the constabulary. the suits on either side are, as you will have ascertained for yourself, absolutely brilliant.

would i like either of those suits that i am all excited about? i think you know the answer.
 

what did we do before the internet? i mean, how did you randomly show off a whole load of crap pictures to people? with the internet it is dead easy to do - you either just upload them to one of your social network things or, if you are of a mind to do so, you set up a blog, name it after a random Manics lyric, and shove loads of images on it, making some sort of gesture of comment about them as you go.

back in the 70s, of course, there was no such thing as a blog or an internet. well, there was, but only The King, Elvis Presley had access to it, with him using it to select Cadillacs and KFC buckets when he couldn't be bothered to go out and get some himself.

no, back in the 70s you had to go right ahead and open up a gallery to show off all of the sh!t pictures you had found, like this lady here has done.

actually, the approach in the 70s was better. you could, as it happens, charge people real coins of actual money to come and look at your gallery, no matter how banal, bland or dull the images were. the pictures she is showing off here, quite possibly to Sugar Ray Robinson, do not feature any random text messages on the top and bottom, so they probably wouldn't be a mega success on the internet. probably better off leaving them in a gallery, really.

70s cuisine was just as awesome as the fashions, look you see. they had seasons for food and everything, man. that's top notch quite class that is. is this place still on the go today? man, i hope so.

i really like the hair that those dudes have on the go. quite mentalist in style, that is. i would dig to go to a place where they have such wild hair on the go.

the only down side to La Fleur that i can see is that they are advocates of French food. one has to remember not to be judgemental - this was the 70s, and insights into the world were limited to the extent, as shocking as it is just to think such a thing now, that French food was some of the finest in the world, if not the finest. now, of course, it is only those who aspirations that stretch to admiring the pinnacle of what McDonalds can achieve with a burger that consider French food to have any value at all.

more Fangoria for you? sure, why not, and a look at an exciting film called The Lost Boys.

why yes, that is indeed him in that picture. you know, him off of that Jack Bauer thing, where he runs around shouting and shooting for a day. the name of the show escapes me for the moment, sorry. also, Jason Patric is in it, although he of course is better known for getting bummed off of Kevin Bacon in that film Sleepers. as was Brad Pitt, but his career seems to have gone on a slightly different trajectory from the one of Jason, so i am not sure anything Kevin Bacon did in it had any bearing at all.

some more sauce? why yes, why not. here's a very cheeky, so to speak, picture off of one of the films that i love more than most other films, Mad Max 2.

this is a cheeky image indeed. for a start, the two at the forefront of the image are only ever seen once in the film, when a biker or something - boss if it was Wez - yanks a tent off of them. the scene exists for no reason other than a touch of comic relief. so it's a bit cheeky to have released this as a promo still. but look, there in the background at the least is The Humungus.

for many people Masters Of The Universe starts and quickly ends with the rather ill-advised live action film version of it starring that Dolph Lundgren fellow, another sterling example of what Sweden gives the world. a lot of people, however, prefer to ignore that film, instead focusing on the comics and the rather smart animated tv series.

unless that is some sort of Spanish interpretive art thing above, i did not know that Skeletor and He Man had identical swords? nice one, maybe it's some sort of meta thing, where it turns out that they are in fact one in the same. i don't know.

a quality urban legend persists to this day, of course, that Masters Of The Universe was quickly created when someone went ahead and made a whole load of Conan The Barbarian toys and then noticed that the film was not one which many kids would be likely to see. there's a certain similarity between Conan and He Man, but more of a "rip off" similarity than them being one in the same, i think.

there was also not really much of an internet in the 80s, bar that one that them kids used to make the girl and the missile with in that documentary Weird Science. which, yes indeed, featured Wez off of Mad Max 2, so i did like it a lot. also, phones were neither mobile nor blessed with cameras on them.

back in the 80s, if you wanted to take a picture then you had to use an actual, real camera. a camera that had one function only, which was to facilitate the taking of photographs. cameras were of a singular mind, then, it can be said, pretty much making them the Terminator of their day. although Terminator was also 80s, so there you go. 2 Terminators, that would be class.

photographs were taken on something called a film, right, which you had to take to a specialist film mender to get developed. this could take a bit of time, although some places could get your photographs ready within an hour. you could pop into Boots, or any other such sort of chemist, if you didn't want to trouble a professional camera mender, and they would get the pictures ready for you to a rudimentary, acceptable level. or, as you can see in this advert - that you can cut out and keep - you could post the film off to some people and have them developed. this was particularly handy if you had taken some pictures that you would feel uncomfortable having developed and handed to you in public, i guess. the kids of today would seem to have no such privacy quarrel with all their selfies and that.

it would be terribly amiss, and indeed regrettable, if i did not include something of particular interest to my good friend Spiros here, and so here is something of interest to Spiros, although you can look too, if you have not already.

it's not so much wrestling that Spiros is a big fan of, rather any sporting activity in which he can grapple with another man in. grabbing men violently and testing his mettle is what Spiros lives for. as point of fact, the chap on the top looks slightly like Spiros, i suppose.

except, of course, in regards of the posterior, or if you like behind, or if you like arse of the chap on the cover. whereas this bloke has a flabby, poorly managed one, the backside of Spiros is something that Spiros takes some formidable pride in. "toned, honed and ready" is how Spiros describes his, usually with a bit of a cheeky wink.

no i do not have a picture of the backside of Spiros to show you here. i don't want to see it, and if you do, well, let me know and i will try and connect you to him. Spiros assures me, however, that you can either balance or bounce a 50p coin on his, the condition of it being so well toned and honed that you could do that if for some reason you wanted to. actually, as far as i am aware, Spiros does indeed let gents do this, on the condition that he gets to keep the 50p coin.

more from Fangoria magazine for you, a magazine which i am not sure if i have or have not been putting the name of in italics throughout this post? sure. here's a very smart advert indeed.

we used to look at these adverts and think that it must be class to be able to buy them. there was no internet, as i have mentioned, and so the idea of being able to order something from anywhere in the world seemed like nothing more than an impossible dream. now, i suppose, you could get either of these items, or ones like them, with pretty relative ease. so long as you were able to cover more than twice the cost of the item thanks to the rather draconian "import tax" the likes of Royal Mail like to place on such things.

one magazine i was perusing, or if you like looking at online, had quite a few car adverts in it. i noticed, with some interest, that just about all of them were for them Rolls Royce cars. whereas today we associate Rolls Royce cars with the exclusivity of luxury and wealth, i am guessing then that in the 70s they were far more common and widespread and everyone had one.

or maybe, i suppose, i was just looking at a magazine aimed at the rather richer members of society.

you will note, i am sure, that that's brown, or in this case Brown, featuring once more in something related to the era of the 1970s. presumably there was some sort of worldwide agreement that all should ensure that, in the centuries which followed it, the decade of the 70s would be forever associated with brown.

is there anything more to Ronnie Wood than pursuing a life of marriage, expensive divorce, persuading the Rolling $tone$ to "do something" to get money in so that he can underwrite the divorce and then getting married again? as it happens, yes.

once, of course, he was a happy, humble member of the Faces. and also, in the 80s, whilst serving as a contract worker for the $tone$ (they didn't make him a full member until the 90s, when they determined that he was not going to do a Mick Taylor on him), he took it upon himself to introduce reggae to the people of Miami. which, in fairness, is a very, very kind thing of him to have done for the people of Miami. it is a shame that the people of Miami did not show their gratitude by offering him a guest spot in Miami Vice, but i suppose that Ronnie wanted no further reward or payment other than being known as the man who brought reggae to Miami. so there you go.

Miami is known for being not all that cold, so i am assuming that these chaps at a place called The Designers did not sell all that many fur coats there. although that cigar looks a trifle Cuban, so it could be that they went to Miami to stock up on them when they wanted a cigar to be in a picture promoting their wares.

yeah, this is another 70s fashion thing; albeit a rare one that it does not feature brown in any overt sense.

is it just me, or is that tag line they have there all kinds of wrong? when the only one you have to impress is you sounds quite like a put down, doesn't it? it's like, dudes, you are all alone, you live a solitary life and you shall always live a life in which a characteristic is that you don't share it with anyone else at all, so you might as well go right ahead and wear our clothes whilst you progress through a life marked by isolation. it does not at all sound like a strong selling point to me. that said, not many gents who wake up on a morning and first think to smoke a cigar and wear some fur would have class social lives, i'd expect.

yeah, we are nearly done here. blimey, this is a bit of a mega-post, is it not?

home video. once upon a time it cost a small fortune, and you didn't have all that many options in regards of it. whereas we had more video tapes than most, i suppose (i am forever indebted to an expose on News At Ten that showed you how to wire up to video machines to make copies), it has to be said that i watched something like Battle Beyond The Stars more then than i would now.

films being released on video tape was once a very big deal indeed. it meant you could rent it and watch it overnight. back then, you have to remember, it was that or settle for what one of the 3 (three) TV channels were showing. here is a couple of pages from a catalogue from a video store announcing some of the exciting titles that the people would soon be able to rent.

whereas the promo picture for Animal House above makes sense, the one they have selected for Battlestar Galactica does not, really. if anything, it might be considered to be something of a spoiler image, although what it spoils was undone or ignored by the second film / episodes stuck together anyway.

on a cinematic note, and for the last time in this post, how about a look at the writer, the director and the lead actor off of Taxi Driver? 

other than brown fashions, the 70s was a time of truly astonishing, exceptional works of cinema. Taxi Driver for me, and many others, ranks very highly as one of the greatest movies ever made. it is not a film for all tastes, of course, but my word is it a powerful one.

hurrah, i hear you say, for we are at an end. in 1981 there were many Sinclair ZX81 users who wished they could be propelled exactly 18 years into the future to see what computers would look like then. someone went right ahead and made quasi time travel possible by creating a device which allowed you to transform your ZX81 into a ZX99.

how accurate was someone in 1981 when they imagined what the computer of 1999 would look like? fairly, you would have to say. they got the general idea that, for the most part, computers would be used mostly for piracy, although not using a "read unit" and a "write unit" to make tapes of stuff with. and the RS232 serial port remains faster, more reliable and less sh!t than any sort of port that Apple have invented. it does not, perhaps, hold up so well against a USB port.

phew. bravo if you read all the text here, but for most of you i would imagine it is appropriate to say that i hope some if not all of these images were interesting.



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