Disney released Mary Poppins in 1964. The next year Ivory Liquid Soap debuted a new mascot: Mary Mild, a flying maid. Seems like an obvious Mary Poppins rip-off to me, though I can't find the similarity mentioned anywhere.
Mary Mild didn't last long. Within two years, Ivory had canned her.
The ads below ran in 1966 in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping.
We've previously posted about "cheese candy", which was the invention of Wisconsin lumberman Stuart Stebbings. Another of his inventions was cheese-filtered cigarettes. He was, apparently, a man driven to find new uses for cheese.
Lab tests demonstrated that a cheese filter could remove 90 percent of the tar in cigarettes. A hard cheese worked best, such as Parmesan, Romano, or Swiss. Although an aged cheddar could also be used. Or even a blend of cheeses.
In 1966, Stebbings was granted Patent No. 3,234,948. But as far as I know, his cheese-filtered cigarettes never made it to market.
An experiment in feedback and reverb by composer Alvin Lucier, 1969.
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.
It's a fairly famous piece of experimental music. But I wonder how many people have actually listened to the entire thing from start to finish, as opposed to skipping ahead to see how his voice changes.
Welcome to 2021, the year in which the 1969 movie Moon Zero Two was set. It was promoted as "the first Moon western". From Wikipedia:
In the year 2021, the Moon is in the process of being colonized, and this new frontier is attracting a diverse human population to lunar settlements like Moon City, Farside 5, and others.
For some reason the trailer for the movie inexplicably identified the year as 2028, even though in the movie itself the date was clearly shown as 2021.
You can watch the entire movie for free on YouTube:
In 1969, astrologer Carroll Righter released an "Astromusical Houses" series of records. It consisted of twelve records, each one devoted to a different sign of the Zodiac. Righter explained, "These albums enable purchasers to select the music of their stars—music that will enhance their state of well-being to alleviate any problems of everyday living that may beset them."
I was able to find five of the albums on YouTube. But not Gemini (my sign).
The film shows Marcel Broodthaers trying to write while the rain constantly washes away the ink. In the final scene, during which the artist gives up and drops his pen, the inscription “Projet pour un texte” (Project for a text) appears.
Is that actually rain, or is someone spraying him with a hose?
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.