Cars! Cars! Cars!

This was my first shock. It's a "whatisit" from 1949 (or something), bulbous like a fungus, or puffy lilke a marshmallow. The hood has these strange vents in it. The creepy protruding headlights  look a bit like Jeff Goldblum's eyes in The Fly. Not a pleasant car, at all.

Maybe it's all my recent musings on the Edsel with its shit-bucket grill, but I became fascinated by all the chrome doo-daddies on the front of these things. This looks like a giant strainer that seems to go the wrong way. Bulby, bulging shapes were the norm back then. When was this? Either the late '30s or early '40s, I think. What car? Who knows. Did I keep track? No. I don't even like cars, but I liked looking at these.

Plain beautiful. Saner-looking grill, though the headlights still have that odd ocular look. It's funny how designs evolve and shade into each other: here the extreme bulbousness is played down, the line is sleeker. Must be late 40s or even 1950.

Home, James! I would describe this one as "stately". Might be a Rolls. This one displays the tiny slitty windows that became the norm for a few years. How did you see out?

This is never a car! Maybe part of a car. Maybe it can fly.

At first glance this looks just like the first photo, but it isn't. Note the difference in the hood, opening in the other direction and without those odd-looking vents.  The headlights are dramatically different, more like spectacles than googly eyes, and there's that tall centre grill like something off a baleen whale. The more you look at them, the less similar they seem. But they're both odd as hell. In fact, to me this looks more like a back end than a front end.  Can it be driven either way, I wonder?

This one is called the Westerburg Flying Roadster with double-axle streamlined Viking shield and removable Matchbox wheels.

Harold Lloyd might have had one of these.

Just to prove I was there. A second later I heard a surly voice behind me: "Don't put your head in the car!" Does this mean the door of the trunk might come down and decapitate me?

(I should explain that this was the Port Coquitlam Car Show. It's nice to go every couple of years and wander around, contemplating HOW ON EARTH some of these cars ever got built. And they thought the Edsel was odd-looking. )

I love a little pussy: the Edsel connection

Now I've got Edsels on the brain.

You know, those cars from the '50s that kinda-sorta-didn't catch on.

The ones that languished in showrooms, then used car dealerships (most of them not even used), then. . . automobile graveyards like this one.

Like the elephants in the  Tarzan movies, maybe these poor abandoned Edsels somehow knew when it was their time, and just chuffed along to the junkyard all by themselves.

But one thing we'll never forget is that useless, metallic hunk of junk stuck on at the front, variously called a horsecollar, toilet seat and (women's genitalia: I'll let you fill in the slang term).

This inspired me to find images that evoke the Edsel Twat:

Bedpan. You hardly have to use your imagination at all on this one.

Latvian opera singer's mouth.

Jim Nabors' mouth.

Wee-jee board thingama-jigger.

Amoeba.

Human heart.

Silly putty container.

Reptile egg.

Upside-down plastic bag of goldfish.

Two hands making that heart thingammy-symbol.

The Head of Our Lord Satan. I think I'm finished.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

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http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

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http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
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Pink genitals on parade

     

moose knuckle (usually uncountable; plural moose knuckles)

1. The ball joint of the humerus in a moose's skeleton.
2. (slang) The noticeable shape of a man's penis when he is wearing tight clothes. 
   • 2005, Benjamin Tripp, Square in the Nuts, ISBN 1411628225, page 92:

     […] the VIP of the GOP, George W. Bush in full military flight suit, with his ejector harness giving him the worst moose knuckle in presidential history.

3. (slang) The shape that is noticeable when tight-fitting clothing wedges between a woman's labia. 

   • 2008, Jess Lourey, August Moon, ISBN 0738713252, page 8:
     

     I was grateful for the distraction, as I had been trying to look anywhere but at the giant moose knuckle spray-painted between her thighs […]

   • 2009, Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff, ISBN 0385664699, page 68:

     At her crotch, the black spandex stretches to cover a small bulge. Bigger than camel toe. Swelling bigger than moose knuckle. Way bigger than a clit […]

 Synonyms

• (labia visible through tight clothing): cameltoe, frontal wedgie

The things you learn. I had to share this with you, even though I'm so tired I'm falling out of my chair and should have gone to bed an hour ago. This Edsel thing got me going on the design of the grill which looked like "a vulva" to some people. I shouldn't have clicked on that word in Wiki cuzzit led me here, to this bizarre term which I kind of like because it's equal-opportunity offensive.

Still, there's something almost romantic about the camel toe/moose knuckle pairing. And it's anatomically a lot more accurate. Don't wear those bulk pantyhose fromTarget.

OH, and I just found this - it's on the level, I think -

SmoothGroove is the safe and effective way to alleviate the crudely termed Camel toe.
The SmoothGroove camel toe solution –

• Is made from a medical grade polymer which moulds itself to the contours of the body, so it is extremely comfortable
• Contains an antibacterial agent, so it is safe
• Is washable
• Comes with a satin pouch to store it discreetly in your wardrobe
• Is available in White, Black and Clear

If you can't decide which colour you like or want to treat someone to their own SmoothGroove, why not buy more than one and get a discount!

It's VULVA, not "Volvo"!

In finding an illustration for today's strange topic, I had to pick from a bunch of different Edsel ads. One was much more esthetically pleasing than this one and showed the car sweeping through a pair of opening gates, with harp glissandos and announcers saying if you had an Edsel, you were showing the world "you've arrived!" The only reason I didn't use it is that it was transferred from film stock that had gone bad, all pink and bleary like a particularly nasty eye infection.

Lots of these things have arrived in auto graveyards, but some people are refurbishing them and putting them in car shows. The fact that it is quite possibly the most hideous automobile ever made does not deter them. In fact it seems to lend them a certain exotic charm.

Having a 1958 Edsel in perfect condition is kind of like having a set of Nazi medals that look "like new". Like, who'd want to?

People have posed various theories about the Edsel, why the intensive and supposedly foolproof ad campaign fell so flat. Was the timing wrong for a new luxury car? Was it too pricey for the typical-average-American-family-of-the-'50s-who-wanted-a-new-car-every-2-years-but-couldn't-always-afford-it-because-Mom-spent-too-much-on-her-effing-manicures? Did it, like the infamous Jaguar, refuse to start?

No, it was just butt-ugly and that's all there is to say about it. Looking at it now sets my teeth on edge: it has a face on it like a robot from Hell.

It looks hostile. It looks aggressive. It looks like some good ol' boy fired up on corn squeezin's and toting a slingshot and a bag o'rocks.

YICK.

The more I watched this video, which I picked for the elegant chrome-laden, turquoise-and-white decor that sums up the '50s, the more I realized it wasn't an Edsel ad at all, but some guy driving his vintage Edsel with some other guy filming it. The other guy's rear-view mirror just kept showing and the cars in the other lanes were too recent. But I don't want to change it cuz the other ads all run about 8 1/2 minutes and feature Bing Crosby, and I couldn't stand that, I'd have a seizure on the spot. It's bad enough even thinking about these automotive nightmares.

This is the kind-of-a-thing that caused Stephen King to write that, you know, that BOOK, and inspired nightmarish TV shows like My Mother the Car.

The name Edsel has come to be synonymous with failure on a great and embarrassing level. But there's so much ugly on it, let's call it Synonymous with Shit-awful, old, chromy, boxy, monster-faced Car-Ideas that whoever thought of it should have shoved so far down their throat it would come out the other side. Or something like that.

Coda. I hate research more than I hate worms, but I had to include this tasty snippet from Wiki:

The Edsel is best remembered for its trademark "horsecollar" or toilet seat grille, which was quite distinct from other cars of the period. According to a popular joke at the time, the Edsel "resembled an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".^[11] Some have speculated that the car failed to sell because its grille resembled a vulva.^[12]

The Edsel's front-end ensemble as it eventually appeared bore little resemblance, if any, to the original concept. Roy Brown, the original chief designer on the Edsel project, had envisioned a slender, almost delicate opening in the center. Engineers, fearing engine cooling problems, vetoed the intended design, which led to the now-infamous "horsecollar."

(Hey! That's vulva to you, mister!)

Just when I want to take a rest, another demented idea comes to me

Just playin' around with dolls. . .

. . . and I ended up here.

Incredible discovery: I swear I'm not making this up!

I swear, I swear, folks, I do not make these things up.

While researching old, creepy doll gifs and vintage YouTube commercial vids to scare the living hoo-ha out of my sweet little grandchild, I came across a lot of things. The doll ads were the best: Betsy Wetsy, Tickles, and Bonny Bride who glides along on a wheeled contraption under her wedding gown and hurls her bouquet from a springloaded arm.

Some of the old toys I hadn't heard of however, including one construction set called Blippo the Builder. Looked like a cross between Dinky toys and the old Meccano set my brothers owned.

But then I got a good look at Blippo. Ye gods! Where had I seen that face before??

YES!

Whoever designed Super Mario Brothers, whether consciously or unconsciously, ripped off the likeness of Blippo. It simply couldn't be anyone else. Same hat, same overalls, same moustache, same EVERYTHING.

This will haunt my dreams.

Pre-Code sex: just cattin' around

Me-OW! Me-ow, me-OW! Chow-chow-chow, meow-meow-meow-meow, and all that stuff.  Well, at least it's not a dog parade. There's something about a bunch of wiggly chorus girls from the '30s pretending to be kitties in fur costumes. It's just. . . surreal. Ruby Keeler in particular is a strange one: not pretty (at all), not charismatic, an atrocious actress and singer, and only a so-so dancer. Must've banged the boss or something.

I watched most of this movie (Footlight Parade) while in a glazed state (just plain tired). It sort of slunk by me in a surreal haze, and I kept on watching it cuz it had James Cagney in it and I've always found him interesting, if a bit frightening. Now HE had all the things Keeler lacked, and was a fair dancer in an odd, stiff-legged way when he played George M. Cohan. He was even prettier than she was, with those heavy-lidded, bedroomy eyes that promised a good slapping around. Then again, pickled herring would be prettier than she was.

This movie was astonishing in that it had multiple Busby Berkeley numbers staged in such venues as giant swimming pools, a Shanghai brothel and an entire hotel full of couples trying to conceive babies. These numbers were all performed live at movie theatres - in fact, the whole entourage had to rush from one theatre to another - to warm up the audience as an opening act for the film.

That meant they had to pack up 57 floors of a hotel in the back of a truck, drag an Olympic-size pool with water in it around with them and scrape together a brothel  as they zazzed from movie theatre to movie theatre, maybe collaring a couple of extra chippies along the way. Nobody asked how they fit all that stuff on a stage that wasn't even that big cuz it wasn't meant for live shows. Not THIS kind of live show anyway. All that water would've warped the floor boards.

This whole thing was coy and jiggly and obviously pre-Code with its references to prostitution, extramarital sex and various kinds of hoochy-koochy. The costumes were brief and filmy and nipples figured large. Within a year the iron gates would have clanged shut on all that bloody sex nonsense. Tarzan still wore his loincloth, but Jane was clad in something like a gym suit and kept referring to T. as her "husband". (So who married them - Cheetah?).

I've made a bit of a study of the Tarzan films - oh God, stop me please, it's late. I'm surprised the second one (Tarzan and his Mate) was even released, as it had a highly erotic nude swimming scene that's well worth seeing.  Jane seems to be living in a kind of sexual reverie with her big ol' ape. But in the third one, the gym suit one, there is a scene in which the filmmakers somehow got around all the rules.

Jane is (supposedly) about to go back to England to sort out her inheritance, so is saying goodbye to Tarzan (reassuring him that she will be back "when the moon makes safari three times"). She's sitting on the ground and he suddenly looms up in front of her. Weismuller couldn't act his way out of a paper bag full of bananas, but physical presence he had, and a sinuous leopardlike jungle tread that was compelling and even a bit disturbing to watch.

Anyway, he gives her what looks like a gardenia. Then she begins to lie back with a look on her face that's complex - it's almost fear, but also anticipation and awe - and a big shadow falls over her and then the camera pans to the river beside her. As her hand slowly opens the gardenia drops into the water and rushes away.

Well, any ninny with 3/4 of a brain knew that they made love, and any ninny with 3/4 of a brain would wonder what that would be like with a big ol' ape man who is basically an animal. In other words, the scene was much more erotically charged than all the jiggles n' giggles of pre-Code fluff.

But what WOULD it be like with Tarzan? Did Jane school him in the ways of erotic delight, or did he just. . . .I'm going to bed now. Jeez.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

. . . while we're busy making other plans

We had the Olympics on in the background most of the time, well, at least part of the time, and I kept wanting to see the equestrian events (the only thing that interests me, besides, I will admit, those young male divers with Speedos that barely cover the essentials). Somehow they never came on, though I recorded great six-hour swaths in the middle of the night.

I was eating dinner and blathering on to my husband about something, when I heard some music, Land of Hope and Glory I think, and turned my head and saw a dark horse.

I wasn't paying half-attention, but I should have been, and after a while my nattering grew less and my attention grew more until I was completely magnetized.

This wasn't a horse. This was some Astaire or Baryshnikov of equitation. He was putting his feet down precisely on each beat of the music. But it wasn't just that. His footfall had a - what, a softness? Softness mixed with sureness, or was it those incredible liquid knees? 


It was hard to believe what I was seeing. The commentator, some English lady who droned on interminably during all the dressage events with her ENDLESS technical nit-picking, wasn't saying very much because I think even she was a bit taken aback.

The music went all over the place (Elgar, James Bond, the Olympic theme) sort of like figure-skating music, but this horse (and rider - let's not forget - she's not just sitting there any more than an orchestra conductor stands up there and waves his arms) seemed to defy the laws of nature. The English lady kept commenting on how smooth his tail was, a river of silk, none of that irritable swishing that seems to indicate the horse wants to get this bloody business over with and get back to the barn for his victory oats.

By the time I was really paying attention to it, it was almost over. The Big Ben chiming accompanied by impeccable, Lippizaner-style pirouettes especially seemed to get to people, maybe because it was so quintessentially English.

Anyway, it took me days to find a full video of this that wasn't shot from a million miles away in the stadium, accompanied by "Ohhh, look at that!" "Isn't he marvelous?" etc.  (One had DREADFUL rock music in place of that amazing score.) This one isn't perfect and seizes and pixillates in places - oh, I hope it doesn't break down altogether. But you get the feeling of it, those instinctively rhythmic hoofbeats: well, not entirely instinctive.

Some say dressage moves just utilize the natural gaits of horses, but I really don't see it. Yes, a wild stallion may prance around, but only when he feels like it or is being territorial. Not many wild horses step in time to the music or execute perfect pirouettes, though it's true that most of them can turn on a dime to escape a predator. So maybe the seeds are there.

I don't know how they get horses to do this except through patient training and a relationship between horse and rider that reflects millennia of close communication.  How I wish now that I had watched more and blathered less, because I haven't seen a video that precisely reflects the performance I saw on TV. Or sort of saw. It was a humbling, shocking reminder of how the most remarkable moments get away from us, happening and unhappening in the one-way flow of time while we're busy doing something else.