More stuff from the 1961-62 edition [click on image to enlarge]
USA
Germany
USA (Milton Glazer)
Japan (box for rice cakes)
Japan (dried seaweed can)
Switzerland
Germany
UK (Ronald Searle)
USA
Switzerland
USA (Seymour Chwast)
This is from an international advertising and packaging annual. These books used to be pretty cheap but now even the beat up ones are kind of pricey. Man, I could look at this stuff all day. [click on image to enlarge]
Japan
UK
UK
USA
Switzerland
Australia
USA
USA (Saul Bass)
USA
Poland
Holland
USA
I’ve been eating a lot of apples lately and my favorite seems to be “Jazz” apples. I know, it’s a horrible, horrible name for an apple. It doesn’t bring to mind Coltrane or Miles Davis eating an apple, it makes me think of “jazz hands” and Kenny G but it’s a really good apple. I know there’s people out there (I’m looking at you Matt Forman) who swear by green apples, those people are wrong. Jazz apples are the way to go. I was out the other day trying to find some, I figured Foodtown wouldn’t have any so I went to Whole Foods. Now, my politics are definitely to the left but going to Whole Foods makes me feel like Ted Nugent sometimes. If you go there at the wrong time it seems to be populated by caricatures of every liberal stereotype. People taking things and ideas I believe in and drawing them out to a horribly narcissistic degree. Of course they didn’t have any Jazz apples, so I went to the hot food section and got the next best thing, a nice slab of pork that had been double marinated in self-satisfaction and guilt (it was delicious). I also got a salad to try and offset the porkness of my visit. I got on line to pay, disgusted with myself for coming in to buy something healthy and leaving with the exact opposite (the salad was just a “beard”). The woman who was two customers ahead of me was buying fifteen cents worth of bulk sunflower seeds and the guy ringing her up was being extremely chatty. It was just inane bullshit and I thought he was hitting on her but no, he was just a friendly talkative guy. There’s nothing wrong with being friendly, there’s not enough friendly people around but keep things going, keep ringing up. The guy in front of me also had a longer than needed conversation with the cashier and by the time it was my turn at bat, I was exuding such a strong “DON’T TALK TO ME” vibe that it felt like visible lines of hate were coming off of me. The cashier, who was just being nice didn’t pick up on the message of “AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGHHHHHH! just fucking ring me up and shut-up!” that I was sending him telepathically and was chatting away. I was wooden with anger but not rude. I finally paid and was steaming out of the store when the automatic sliding door was a little slow and I walked into it head first. It was pretty goddamned funny. I went to Foodtown that night, they had Jazz apples and all was right with the world.
I was pretty much a fuck-up when I was in high school (Raritan high school, Hazlet NJ, class of 1980). Not in the cool “rebel without a cause” kind of way, more of a “I hate everything but am too lazy to rebel, so I’ll just get fucked up” kind of way. My senior high school picture was a good case in point. We had our pictures taken and we got sent four photos to choose from. When I got the pictures I didn’t do anything, fuck the yearbook, I hated everybody. My inaction meant that one was chosen for me by the photographer and they picked the worst one and didn’t retouch my healthy crop of zits. I’m sure there have been worse yearbook photographs, I’m sure there’s a website dedicated to them but this was me and it kind of sums up my high school years.
hello ladies
I found some more ’45 sleeves that I thought were pretty cool looking. I think they are from late ’60s through early ’70s. (click on image to enlarge)
My aunt sends my brother and I a box of pears every year for Christmas. I’m not really a pear guy. They have an odd texture and they taste weird. Actually they taste and feel like pears which is fine but I always look at them as weird apples and am disappointed when they don’t taste like apples. I eat them but… Anyhow, when my brother came over around New Years he left an unwanted pear here and I wanted to get back at him so I smooshed it up a little bit and mailed it back to him. The return address on the giant box I put it in was “28 Chicken Street”. Now that address has some history to us. When we were little kids, we moved to West Keansburg from Bayonne. Our parents wanted us to memorize our address in case we got lost, 130 Essex Avenue, West Keansburg. My brother who’s a wise ass refused to say the correct address and instead insisted that he lived at 28 Chicken Street. My parents were pissed and my brother kept it up, 28 Chicken Street, 28 Chicken Street. They sat him at the kitchen table and in what was reminiscent of a police interrogation, “Where do you live?, Where do you Live?!”. By this time I think my brother actually forgot where we lived and just knew 28 Chicken Street. It was a long night. I’m expecting a rotten pear in an elaborate package for my birthday.
we're a happy family (years after the "Chicken Street unpleasantness")
1/13/12 Brooklyn
We are playing The Music Hall of Williamsburg tonight part of our whirlwind two day, two show U.S. tour. Last night when we were loading the truck at the studio I walked passed a candy machine a few times hearing its siren call. Now, I’ve been on a diet and I really shouldn’t be eating candy but sometimes I do. This particular machine had tiny packs of Swedish Fish. Many of you may recall from my spread in Modern Lighting Guy Quarterly that one of my turn-ons is Swedish Fish. So I went and put a dollar in the machine, the corkscrew like mechanism turned slowly and…….nothing. It didn’t fall to the bottom it was stuck. I know this is shitty, bad comedy 101 territory but it happened and I was pissed. I shook the machine, nothing. The Swedish Fish were there mocking me, so I took another dollar out and….pow! Not only did I get the initial bag but I got the second bag as well, huzzah. Two bags of Swedish Fish, an embarrassment of candy riches. I opened the first bag and good Christ, they were so goddamned stale, it was as if somebody had fashioned Swedish Fish out of stone, painted them red and put them in a bag. I was probably being filmed for some prank show, aauughh! I managed to choke down four or five before I realized they were all stale and I didn’t even try the second bag
After I got fired as singer for Monster Magnet I had an “I’ll show them!” moment and started another band. The band was Daisycutter. Here’s a tip for anyone who wants to start a band, if you really want to have a bit of control on the bands musical direction then you should actually write music or be able to play an instrument. Me saying “I want it to sound like Spacemen 3 and Loop but with two drummers” without having any examples wasn’t the right way to go about it. So it wasn’t the drone rock juggernaut I had envisioned but it was ok. We had recorded what would be our first single and we were talking about a art for the sleeve. I was a big fan of Jim Woodring (Jim, Frank) and I wrote to him asking him about doing art for it. Also at this time if you sent a photograph of yourself he would do an interpretive “Jiva” portrait. I sent him a picture of me in what I thought was my “coolest” shirt, a Negativeland shirt with the words “Christianity is stupid, give up”. A few weeks later I got back an envelope with some sketches. I got voted down as everyone else thought $500 was too expensive, we didn’t have a lot of money and I couldn’t do it myself so we passed on it. I think a few of these came out in “The Book of Jim” a few years ago. Thanks to Cliff for giving me a nudge about posting these. [click on image to enlarge]
From 1968, By Joe Simon. Don’t ask, just read. Thanks a lot to Tom Chesek,(note: there’s a splash page on pages 14/15, I scanned as much of both pages as I could then put them separately-Tedious Tim)
(click on image to enlarge)
Carrie and I try to watch as many old movies as we can, “try” is the operative word there. When we do actually get to watch something old, more times than not it’s something we Tivo’d on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). I got Carrie a subscription to the monthly movie guide and the subscription was due. As it’s her birthday next month I wanted to renew the subscription. Today was also the first day off I’ve had by myself since before I went on tour in October and there was a shitload of things I wanted to get done. A staggering amount of tiny annoying chores that I had put off for too long. It was so daunting that I tried to do everything at once, the only thing I finished was five cups of coffee. So I wanted to at least complete something, even if it was just renewing a subscription. I went on the Turner site, found the subscription page and filled out everything before I saw in giant letters, NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS ONLY. Alright, that’s fine. I found a “manage your accounts” heading and clicked onto it. I typed in the the account number that’s on the magazine and put in my zip code. NO!…Account number is incorrect. OK, I’ll try it again, there’s a lot of numbers, I’m somewhat frazzled. So I took my time…and… NO!… Account number is incorrect. Fuck you! it is not!. Take it easy champ, maybe it’s the series of letters over the numbers. So I typed in the numbers…and…NO!!… Account must be in numbers (of course. It’s fucking ACCOUNT NUMBERS, not LETTERS! you idiot! aaaauuugh!!). So I gave up (one of my super powers) and I found another page where I could find the account by putting in the addresee, so I typed it in, Carrie Wyndorf (she kept her maiden name, I didn’t want to include her in the Cronin curse). Nothing,name not on file, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I can’t even renew a goddamn magazine subscription. Just as I was going to tear up the Turner Movie Guide into tiny pieces I noticed the name it was addressed to. When we got married we used to joke that we should combine both our names and use the hybrid name Crondorf it had a certain retarded classiness to it. So as a joke when I gave her the subscription I had it addressed to Carrie Crondorf. With that bit of info, I successfully renewed the subscription. I finally accomplished something on my day off.
