random september

hello there

well, here we go again, look you see. for some reason these "random" posts, in which i collect entirely random images off of the net that mildly amuse or interest me, are somewhat popular. perhaps people have the same amusement and interest level as i, and thus i'd not be as isolated as i thought, or maybe some just "hot link" to these.

for whatever reason all of this provides interest, here you go with an absolute stack of them. these should, avid and frequent visitor to this blog, keep you going over the weekend, on the off chance that nothing comes to mind to add here.

a good a place as any to start, then - and phew, i seem to have gathered and uploaded loads of pictures - is Burt. here he is back in, i think, 1979.

the only surprising thing about Burt being pictured with a Playboy bunny is that there is only one Playboy bunny in the picture. Burt was, and in many respects is, a ladies lodestone, as it were. i like to picture Burt like Pondo Sinatra in the latter stages of Party Animal, where all he does is click his fingers and the ladies come running. sorry if that's a Party Animal spoiler for you, by the way.

to top it all off, Burt happens to be a very decent actor, and as i have pointed out here before, he's never had the recognition or accolades that he deserved for it. whereas i understand he hated the movie, Boogie Nights saw him deliver the kind of knockout performance you imagine actors live for and dream of being able to give. it remains for me, what some 18 or so years later, an absolute disgrace that he did not win the Oscar he was nominated for in regards of this film. i don't know who actually won it and i do not care; nothing was as good as Burt was in that film that year.

for some reason some people find adverts for old computer stuff an exciting and interesting thing to have a gander at on the internet. to that end, then, here's an advert for some computer things from as far away as Canada for you to have a bit of a gander at.

there is probably someone out there who for some reason likes to argue their assumed fact that Canada "never got Windows 95". if you are aware of such a person, feel free to wave this advert at them, so that they may know they were wrong.

to my knowledge you can't actually buy Windows 95 any more. you also cannot, as a trip to any retailer selling them shall reveal, get creme eggs for 14p, as you could some 30 years ago.

there was a whole lot of fuss, either earlier this year or tres earlier last year, about creme eggs. the complaints, for complaints composed the fuss, was all about them tasting different (allegedly because they had been all of a sudden made in an halaal way) and them being smaller than they were. i am, in truth, not the biggest fan of them, but the last one i had - which was post-controversy - seemed to taste as i recalled it would, and was of a reasonable size.

cigarette advertising, or if you like advertising cigarettes, is now a thing of the past as we are all quite aware. in many respects this is quite a shame, as there were truly some impressive and highly creative ones created for this purpose. this one for Benson & Hedges, alas, was simply awful.

i would suggest that anyone who started smoking on the basis of that advert was a moron who undoubtedly deserved whatever misery it was that befell their life as a consequence. also, whoever created that advert basically stole money from Benson & Hedges.

i quite like the concept of "middle tar" - far easier to assess the cigarette qualities by, that is. now it is all meaningless numbers and "mg" after them - how am i supposed to know if it's a low, medium or high content with nothing to gauge or measure it by?

next up is an awesome image of Fleetwood Mac, very much from those crazy, shag-happy days of their celebrated Rumours era. i would not dream to suggest that this is a rare or seldom seen image, but i will say that it's the first time i have seen this particular promo shot. if the same is true of you, nice one.

or nice one that you have now seen it, at the least, and not nice one that you hadn't.

the making of Rumours - the mountains of cocaine, the inter-band and inter-crew f***fest, the fights, the excess and the astonishing, astonishing music - is the stuff of legend. with each passing year, alas, it seems that a revisionist history is applied, and the members of the band water down the events around the recording of the record. a similar thing is happening to the legends surrounding the three day orgy that was held to celebrate the release of Queen's Jazz record.

this watering down, or if you like sanitizing, of rock mythology is sad. it's almost as sad as the pathetic state of stale, dull musicians today. i want to go back to a time where rock legends were legends, where they lived an insane, excessive, indulgent and very desirable life - that's why we made them heroes.  i don't know how to get that life back, sadly, except to keep buying Kasabian records and hope the world takes the hint.

speaking of heroes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood. here they are in some non-English magazine, being celebrated despite the fact that, at this stage of early 1984, they had only the one single, Relax, to their name.

i've included this mostly because i would like to think that some of the band would be amused by how their talents are listed in his non-English approach to their craft. Ped, i imagine, would rather like the idea of what he does being descried as "bateria", whereas Mark may well like the sound of "bajo". in the case of the latter, that would be particularly true if the rock legend of how the sounds for Ballad Of 32 were created was in fact what happened, but alas sadly it didn't.

also, "disko-funk duro obsceno" sounds, to me, like an exciting and excellent way to describe the band.

i recall in an interview in 2000, maybe 2001, Bowie stated quite categorically that music will "soon flow like water". i'd like to think that whoever coined the phrase "streaming" for how the kids these days listen to music was inspired to do so by that interview.

as much as i like Bowie, i cannot but help wish, knowing now what we all do, that he was wrong. it's not that the art, or if you like practice, of buying music has gone, it's the disappearance of the social side of it which is the problem.

there just doesn't seem to be any great or important sense of a band or artist getting massive any more, as far as i can see or work out. music, when not disposable, has become a seemingly entirely isolar thing now, where one just listens to it on their own.  there's not, for example, been a massive movement in music. where's the next breakthrough style coming from? surely punk, new wave, new romantic, rap, rave, grunge and so on are not the be all and end all on top of the standards of rock and pop? the music scene these days appears to be as free of identity as it is lasting content, and that's a real shame, man.

back to Playboy, you say? a look at Hugh doing some fancy rollerskating in the company of a few of the more balanced of his many, many Playboy bunnies? yeah, i thought it was well worth a look too.

some of you may want to question Hugh's stylish clothes, or perhaps even his skating style. if that's you, ask yourselves these questions - do you live in a massive mansion? is your mansion populated with dozens of naked ladies who will sleep with you if you wink at them? can you call up Presidents, rock stars, actors and other celebrities and have them be grateful to you for calling and inviting them over? no? then shut up. Hugh is probably the only person who is close to being an equal of The King, Elvis Presley in regards of this, and thus is beyond being questioned by the likes of you and i.

some classic VHS action? sure, why not. here's an advert luring you into the world of buying a new video machine so that you may enjoy several (actually seven) features.

that's a smart deck, that is. a front loader, too, which was somewhat still a novelty in 1984.  i had a JVC myself, but that would have been a class machine to have, that.

there shall be some more smart VHS action in a little while, but here's a promo thing from 1984 that seemed perfectly normal then, although i doubt that it is one they would allow you to do now.

Jack Charlton was, and indeed is, a hard man. when not punching teammates or players under his charge for not playing the way he expected, he was off out with a fishing rod or a shotgun, killing things.

this was, as i dare say you can make out, a piece to promote a new TV show on the then-new Channel 4. i wonder if one can still find it, as it would be totes smart to see 10 hours of Jack Charlton explaining the best way to kill things.

there was a time, dear reader, when ex-footballers went on to be either managers, "pundits", gameshow captains, pub owners or bonkers alcoholics that drank themselves to death quite quickly. in some cases, some of the more exceptional ones managed to combine two or more of these qualities. these days see you not get ex-players following these career paths so much. it's probably better for them that they do not, i suppose. as and when they finish playing, for instance, one can't really see a Ronaldo or a Messi being hired to present a TV show about shooting things. they may well want to, but no doubt their PR people would get involved and block any effort by them to do so.

back, then, to the lost world of rock excess. few, if any, were so blatant and open about their excesses as the band Kiss. here they are, in their hedonistic 1974 heyday, promoting their Hotter Than Hell album.

it would have been around this time, or perhaps a couple of years before, when the band Faces beautified the inside of their album sleeve with polaroid pictures of groupies that had "met" them after gigs. you would kind of suspect that no band today would either think to, or be able to get away with, the at the time smart and class stuff that bands like Kiss and the Faces did to general approval and envy.

to inject a rare bit of quality into this blog post, here's some images of the late, great Stanley Kubrick from an interview he gave in 1968. yes, an interview. once upon a time he was rather accessible and always happy to talk to people. it was really only after 1972, as in the post-Clockwork Orange period, that he elected not to speak to the media much further, for all they wished to speak of was Clockwork Orange and things of it which were not the film.

the first image is a rather well known one, and it's the one that Bowie pretty much nicked to use a variant of on the pictures for his "heroes" album. and why not, you would if you could. the other two, however, don't really get used so much, so there you go.

magazines are, for the most part, going the same way as music, so you don't get smart magazines for men like Pickup being published on a regular or accessible basis any more.

i think the last time i saw an edition of Pickup was at the house and home of Spiros back in his hedonistic Pretoria days. it was boss; he said that he "found" a few dozen or so editions of Pickup and similar in his house, as well as some male interest videos. he was not sure how exactly they ended up in his house, and it was a similar mystery to him as to how his credit card details were on the receipts for all of them.

being gay when Pickup was in its prime must have been boss. you could just get on with being gay and have fun and excitement with your life. now, of course, being gay means that you are compelled to be a champion of or crusader for whatever is flavour of the month on social media things, and sometimes it also means you are the default choice for mediocre chat shows on British television.

today many would assume that Platini's name is in fact "that twat Platini", as he is seldom referred to as anything nicer than that - indeed often it is a lot worse. it's easy to forget that once he was a magnificent footballer. when he first rose to power at UEFA, there was a sense of excitement that an actual football man was to be in charge of football. how wrong we were to think things would be better.

i think it's next year that the European Championships are being held in France. this is despite France not being the clear or outright winner of the vote to host the 2016 edition. how did it come to be that they are hosting? a good question, especially as many seemed to know the result before the voting took place.

those that think FIFA will be better off under Platini, seemingly the inevitable heir apparent to Blatter, could well find themselves in for something of a disappointment. if the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was the final straw that brought the current FIFA house of cards crashing down, then doing one of them google searches on Platini's shall we say interesting relationship with Qatar suggests that he may well not be the best man to pick up the deck and start again. but still, he was one hell of a footballer, and it will be a great shame if that's a matter that was entirely forgotten with what is to come.

more VHS? sure. how about a multifunctional machine that you could actually break in two to get the most versatile use from it?

i don't think in this day and age you are actually allowed to randomly wander around in an ill-fitting suit and film children engaged in sporting activities, but you could when this smart machine was built. i'd actually be quite interested in getting my hands on one of these machines as it seems it connects via magnets or velcro. how, with 70's technology, did the two bits know when they were connected and thus should work together as one?

a promo shot for the often derided and dismissed Predator 2, which i happened to watch again last night. do they even issue black and white promo shots any more?

watching Predator 2 again was fun. it was full of high levels of gratuitous violence, full frontal nudity and basically all the excesses that they could think of to load the film with. it also features Busey getting knacked off of a Predator missile and surviving it. sorry if that's a spoiler.

as my mate Shaun pointed out, Predator 2 features Murtagh and Mr Joshua off of Lethal Weapon. if it had also found the space for Riggs, it could have been a quasi-Lethal Weapon sequel, which would have been boss. that's probably why they didn't do it. and also because Riggs, or if you like Mel Gibson, seemed firmly in the pocket of Warner, and Predator was a Fox thing.

where did it go wrong for Mel Gibson? i trace it all back, frankly, to Braveheart. it was ridiculous that he was allowed to get away with his bizarre revisions of history (the use of kilts some 300 years before they were known to be worn in Scotland, omitting the part where William Wallace did deals with the English, a prototype IRA before there was even an Ireland, let alone English occupation of the place, etc), but giving him actual, proper awards for doing so gave him a ludicrous sense of entitlement. if he could do as he pleased with Scottish history and get praise for it, why wouldn't he think he could freely express his views on other nations, religions and so on?

i understand that it suits Apple's marketing division for everyone to believe that Apple invented the wristwatch as long ago as earlier this year. watches were, however, a thing before then. also, watches from before the time that Apple "invented" them had the same functionality as the one that Apple has "created", with the added advantage that they told the time even if they were not in a wifi connected area.

this watch from the 70s tells the time and has either your name on it or a short message. this is effectively all that the Apple watch can do, with it being the case that this 70s version is 100% more multifunctional as it is capable of doing both of them at the same time. back to the drawing board, then, Apple - better luck next time.

blimey, i really have put a lot of pictures up here this time and i am fast running out of steam in regards of finding things to write about them. to that effect, then, here is an advert for a Stetson hat which will have to speak for itself, if it doesn't by default anyway.

 

when it comes to quality headgear i suppose i am more of a Reni hat sort of chap than anything else. would i wear a stetson? sure, why not if i found one. it's not like i wear hats purely on the basis of whether or not a drummer off of The Stone Roses has worn it. actually, yes it is.

finally, then, a sense of perspective for the generation of today. you may all think that you invented all this twitter and grinder and tinder stuff, but in truth it's being going on since the 60s, if not before then.

yep, the above is how you used to "tweet" someone. you went around to their house, right, and you told them something in person. they would let you know if they liked it or not, and had no need to press a button in order to tell you if they did.

phew. i am exhausted after that lot, and you probably are too if for some reason you read it all. i will try and make the next post a good deal shorter and kept towards some sort of point.



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