Follies of the Madmen #269

Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 26, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Tobacco and Smoking, Husbands, Wives, Air Travel and Airlines, 1970s

The Escorts

You've heard of MUSIC FROM BIG PINK? Well, here's MUSIC FROM THE BIG HOUSE.

Full story here.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 24, 2015 - Comments (2)
Category: Crime, Music, 1970s

How the AMC Building got its name, 1973

Warren Times-Mirror and Observer - Jan 15, 1973

The AMC Building - 5001 Eisenhower Ave. via Flickr.

I first encountered the story of how the AMC Building got its name in Chuck's 1989 News of the Weird book. Later, I also noticed it in National Lampoon's True Facts. So because I'm amusing myself over at about.com by telling the story of some classic weird news stories in more depth, I recently decided to try to find out if there were any more details to the AMC story. For instance, what other names were submitted in the contest? Were all the other entries so bad that the committee decided it had to choose the most obvious name possible? Or was this really just "army originality" at work.

But after a lot of digging, I've come up empty.

The story of the name-choosing contest is mentioned in the Army Materiel Command's own official history (pdf), published in 2013. So I contacted the AMC and asked them if they knew of any more details to the story. Their pr rep contacted the historians, who returned the answer that, no, that's all there is to the story. No other details survive. So we'll never know exactly why the "AMC Building" was the winning entry in the "Name the new AMC Building" contest.

But I can report that the AMC Building no longer houses the headquarters of the AMC. The AMC moved out of the Eisenhower Ave. building in 2002, relocating its headquarters first to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and later to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, where it currently can be found.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 15, 2015 - Comments (12)
Category: Military, Odd Names, 1970s

Redactron Word Processor

Apparently, if you can believe the ad, this early feminist word-processor had the side-effect of liberating women.

Original ad here.

History here.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Nov 06, 2015 - Comments (14)
Category: Business, Computers, 1970s, Women

Blind People

Posted By: Paul - Thu Nov 05, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: PSA’s, 1970s, Differently Abled, Handicapped, Challenged, and Otherwise Atypical, Eyes and Vision

Anything you can do out of a suit you can now do in a suit

If I ever tried this move, I'd be stuck that way forever.

Source: New York Times Magazine - Apr 30, 1972

Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 03, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Advertising, 1970s

Mao’s Crystal Coffin

Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 28, 2015 - Comments (6)
Category: Body, Celebrities, Death, Politics, 1970s, Asia

Rat Art

March 1975: Dr. Richard Cimbalo of Rosary Hill College (now Daemen College) held an exhibition of "rat art" in order to raise money for the school's psychology department. "The rats painted by grabbing with their front paws a brush extended into their cages, and Cimbalo said each of the artists had its own style."

I wonder what became of this rat art. Probably stored away in a box in someone's attic. Or tossed out.

Someone should open a Museum of Animal Art — to collect together in one place all the paintings by rats, chimpanzees, elephants, etc. that have been produced over the years.

The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA) - May 12, 1975

The Daily Courier (Connellsville, PA) - Mar 15, 1975

Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 20, 2015 - Comments (3)
Category: Animals, Art, 1970s

The Elvis Diet

Everyone knows about Elvis's penchant for fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches. But some of these other items, as instanced in the book below, have faded from popular memory.





[Click to enlarge]

Original article here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Oct 11, 2015 - Comments (5)
Category: Eccentrics, Food, 1970s, Twentieth Century, Bodybuilding, Pain, Self-inflicted and Otherwise

Flowers of Darkness

This scare-documentary certainly starts out by making a good case for drugs as an antidote to the horrors of life, even showing an image of Buddha as celebrity endorsement.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 09, 2015 - Comments (3)
Category: Drugs, PSA’s, 1970s