Editor’s note: Dear readers, this poem is away on a top secret mission and is currently unavailable to view. It should return later this year in the spring. Apologies for any inconvenience. Ford.
Words and art by the editor.
Thanks to a three-masted ship of inspiration:
Sophia Riley-Kobacker ** The History of Emotions Blog ** Everything2: Nick Cave’s Love Song Lecture **
… and nothing to do with hats, though it is a little mad, Alice…
… mad objects like coins, pasta, moon rocks, pencil shavings, Andorran flag bottle tops, and more! Maybe some of our Italian visitors can help out with the significance of these photographed objects placed next to drawings of cars? Or will they be as nonplussed as us? Non? What’s Italian for ‘no’? The catalogue in question is Italian, a Bburago HAT (Hobbies And Toys) 1976 N°2 edition. Perhaps catalogue N°1 had similar designs? The objects seem to be ‘hobby’ or ‘food’ related? Just how are these everyday items related to toy cars??
So many questions, I know, I know! Let’s move quickly to the scans which show some truly wonderful artwork of the models available by Bburago at the time. As was often typical with 1970s advertising, design teams didn’t photograph their product they hired artists to draw it!
The cover… already you see weird objects, but not so noticeable as the images are tiny…
Inside… it all begins in a quite orderly fashion with a very cool cross section of a die cast car…
And then… Bam! Straight down the rabbit hole… it’s random object time…
(with bonus FREE pun-and-nonsense commentary from our editing team!!)
1.
… A serious car, serious coinage!
Coins!
2.
Please put the lid back on the toothpaste when you’ve finished brushing your teeth!
Toothpaste lid!
3.
Somebody call me a thimble!
Thimble!
4.
Excuse me, officer, I seem to have lost my marbles!
Marbles!
There are others…
Think I’ve got most of them…
(click images to go bigger)
5 – 22
23.
Bottle tops. The nearest one appears to be the Andorran flag?
Bottle tops!
24.
The pen is mightier than the police car?
Pen nibs!
25.
Back to school. Pencil shavings!
Pencil shavings!
At school, in your pencil case, you were likely to have a cheap, plastic sharpener, red, yellow or blue or something; if you were lucky, you’d have one of those sturdy, metal, technical drawing sharpeners; some had sharpeners that were moulded inside see-through containers into which the shavings could be collected and emptied later; others had novelty promotional sharpeners for cartoon, TV and film characters.
Then there was the ‘beast-of-all-sharpeners’… the one that belonged to the entire class, usually bolted onto the end of the teacher’s desk – a sinister-looking device that could grind down three different-sized pencils at a time, automatic or crank handle-operated, when in motion it sounded like a derailed steam train driven over a cliff by Godzilla, and this monster of a pencil-sharpener, make no mistake, could easily rip off your fingers, and the entire lower arm of some of the smaller pupils!
26.
Decorative beads or tongue-tingling sweets?? No fear, we’re not taste-testing them, they’ve been out of their packaging since 1976!
Decorative beads or tongue-tingling sweets??
Calls down to archives: “Wooof… got some tasty new treats for you to test out, dear cat(muhuhahaha)…”
Wooof: “But you’ve already tested them yourself, dear editor.”
Me: “I have?”
Wooof: “Yes, what do you think it was that I sprinkled on top of your cappuccino this morning?”
Me (going green about the gills): “Uuumph!”
27.
… And finally… a back pages questionnaire, for kids, in Italy, in 1976.
Thanks for identifying random objects with us :) If you know the identity of any of the mystery objects in today's post please let us know in the comments. Likewise, if you have any idea what is going on, about anything at all really, ever, we're here, and we'd like to know too! This post has been brought to you by TVTA random objects and old school schools of old school school stories.
Beautiful Glo-Lili in her long blue dress, underneath all her blue she’s got long metal legs,
Underneath her chin she’s got a violin that sings,
Go Lili Glo-Lili go blue thing.
Sing: I like black with a little bit of red but today I’m scanning blue,
Blue for you and the family and the crew and people gone blue like me and you.
And if you ain’t this blue this is no place for you,
come back tomorrow when the town’s painted red,
and the purple rain comes pouring down on mellow yellow peach umbrellas,
all strawberry tears and fluorescent fears tied up in pretty polka-dot bows,
and stripy green zebras remembering the weather that was yellowy hot
and too orangey for crows.
Go Lili Glo-Lili go blue thing.
Sing: I like ice to make slicker my liquor but today I’m scanning blue,
Blue for the cashflow holy cow blues and the holes in my shoes,
and the finger pointing rules and the push and the shove,
and the pain oh dull pain of unrequited love.
Won’t ya call back tomorrow when the blue fades away?
Bring a guitar and some percussion we can chase this hue away.
And please, sky-mister, it’s not that I have anything against your pale colour,
It’s just that I can’t wear you on a day such as this.
Go Lili Glo-Lili go blue thing.
Sing: I like a smoke when I consider matters but today I’m scanning blue,
Blue for the mobs hiding under yellow jackets, and bombs under jackets in market places,
and morbidly obese cats in suits, and bodies draped in flags screaming bloody nationalist tunes,
and banana skin jackets lobbed at black footballer players,
and the glittering queens of chaos in their diamond-encrusted leopard print shoes.
Oh, shall I sing you the blues, the blues for me, or the blues for you?
Shall I take up my violin and chase away those little devils?
And if I do I’ll be sure to wear the bluest of blues.
Go Lili Glo-Lili go blue thing,
Sing: I like to put to rights all the bad things,
With my violin in hand I add romance to form,
the right chords into funk, psychedelia, R ‘n B, jazz and rock ‘n roll –
Is how I roll, how I rock, in my long blue frock.
So if you see me in some corner try your best to catch my eye,
And I’ll play you a little number if the colour seems alright.
Something old something borrowed something classic something blue,
something sweet, pure and kind to take the blues right out of you.
Words and photographs by the editor.
Jazz/Funk/Psychedelic/Rock n Roll image made with CoolText and LunaPic.
George Clinton image: George Clinton – Parliament & Funkadelic – live at Montreaux 2004. DVD.
Editor’s note: Dear readers, this poem is away on a top secret mission and is currently unavailable to view. It should return later this year in the spring. Apologies for any inconvenience. Ford.
“An angel may weep if a twin should die”
Día de Muertos. November 1st. 2018.
Words and lino cut by the editor.
American Crescent Cycles par Winthrop Ramsdell 1899
La Tournée du Chat Noir par Thoéphile Steinlen. 1896. Tin plate.
Cats That Come Back. At a poster store in Montmartre you spent your final few euros on cards depicting the lithographic advertising styles of the late 19th and early 20th century. You took photos of the outside of the poster store, and had one taken of yourself and your youngest son, a part of you indulging in some late-afternoon fantasy that you were the proprietors of said store. What fun, surrounded by art originally intended to part one from one’s cash – and a hundred years later it’s still doing the same, only selling itself this time around. What a sale, what a fine boutique did those Parisian streets make for you. For it’s easy to get lost in the culture, art and spirit of expression when it surrounds you in all its breath-taking vibrancy. There is a deep yearning. A searching back through history to find a part of yourself you may recognise. Print advertising is consumerism’s cocky high art. A brassy exhibition of wonders. A sly yet alluring gallery that invites you inside. It’s everything you love and loathe in the same moment. You pitch these paper testimonials to commercialism with all the integrity and enthusiasm of a loving archivist. But you are also an artist. Those Paris streets and galleries and windows and walls whispered to your heart. Hell, sometimes they yelled at you, told you they remembered, recalled your angels & fey (born from the snippets and slivers of glossy ads in magazines in case you didn’t know), the exhibitions, the foreign shores, the hours spent holding brushes and conjuring colours. You sold it well, they said. You made an impression. You left a mark. People were happy. Sometimes that’s the least you have to do. From: The Artist and the Four Hats
Job par Alfons Mucha 1896
Job done?
For a bit
Too busy writing
To try and score another hit
It’s a circle you see
A merry go round
You jump on and off at certain points
feet touch the ground
Back up again
Always looking for those special connections
Palooka N° 5
Words, Angel & Fey artwork by the editor.
Colour Angels & Fey scans taken from Palooka issue 5.
Lithograph adverts scanned from commercial postcards and tin plates are shown for illustrative purposes only. No infringement of copyright is intended.
Cat count: we spotted at least 26 images of cats in this blog post. A new TVTA record!
