Remember Robbie the Robot, that sauve and sophisticated automaton from the classic sci-fi movie, Forbidden Planet? When I was in junior high, I used to ride my bike down to a now sadly defunct museum of movie props in Buena Park, CA called "Cars of the Stars and Planes of Fame"* to see Robbie in all of his dusty, abandoned glory.

These days, Robbie's been renovated and even has his own website where I can view cool memorabilia and video clips of him in action without having to pedal a 100-lb Schwinn 10-speed 15 miles each way through heavy traffic. Life is good.

*-Unbeknownst to me at the time, Von Dutch used to camp out in the museum parking lot to hawk his wares. Yes, I'm kicking myself.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 5:33 PM | Permalink

Wow, yesterday was a great day to be a gearhead in the blogosphere. Lotsa excellent posts about kustom kars kept popping up. Here's a recap of the best of the best:

The Cartoonist wins the checkered flag by posting 3...count 'em...3 great automotive-themed sites:

Automotive Hollywood, a look at the work of visionary car designer, Harley J. Earl.
Tom Daniel, creator of over 85 model kits for Revell.
Keith Weesner, painter of hotrods and hot women.

Meanwhile, over at MetaFilter, this cool cover gallery of CARtoons magazine appeared in between the usual assortment of snarky posts about politics and gushing over Apple products. I read CARtoons so voraciously in the days before I got my driver's license, that the pages were stuck together like the Playboys hidden between my mattress and box springs (but from drool, doncha know).

As for my own contribution to this meme, I'll point you to the site of John Detrich, an artist who's clearly an acolyte of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, as well as a couple of other posts I've made on the topic of show rods.

Vrooom! Vrooom!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Back in 1939, these wonderful advertisements appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine, featuring the adventures of a quintessentially whitebread American family at the New York World's Fair Westinghouse pavilion. I'll bet they enjoyed some skinless weiners when they were through looking at all those fabulous exhibits.

And there's plenty more cool ephemera to ogle at this fascinating, but navigationally challenged site.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

ATOM: the Aluminum Tree and Ornament Museum. That's supposed to be Tammy Faye Bakker in the picture as a tree-topping angel. Needs more makeup.

via LinkFilter

Posted by MrBaliHai at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The wonderful SWAPATORIUM has posted another set of hilarious 1977 yearbook photographs; this time, it's a couples calendar.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Super Marketing: Ads From Comic Books features a collection of those extremely misleading ads for Sea Monkeys and other craptacular products that used to grace the pages of our favorite graphic novels. I found this ad for "America's Favorite Pet: Baby Raccoons" particularly hilarious (in a disturbing sort of way), imagining the fun children and their parents must've had with these lovably rabid and destructive little critters running amok in their homes.

And those of you who struck out with the hand-puppet method of picking up girls, may wish to consider this extremely sauve and sophisticated approach next.

I had my own bad encounters with comic-book products: I ordered both the $6.98 nuclear submarine and this ten-cent lunar module kit. In the case of the former, I received a large cardboard box with a picture of a submarine printed on the sides, and I received nothing at all from the latter. The experience turned out to be a valuable object lesson that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Link spotted at Exclamation Mark and PCL Linkdump

Posted by MrBaliHai at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As you can see from these hilarious high-school yearbook photographs, 1977 was not exactly the Golden Age of Fashion or flattering hairstyles. I'd like to think that the gentleman pictured above was voted "Most Popular Pimp Daddy" by his classmates. In all fairness, '77 was also the year that I graduated, and my fashion sense was only slightly less retarded (at least the jacket and tie were borrowed).

There's plenty more retro goodness to see at the SWAPATORIUM

P.S. Why is there a log in all those pictures?

Posted by MrBaliHai at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The American Sign Museum and the Neon Museum. Great stuff. I apprenticed with a sign maker for about six months, and almost fell off a ladder in front of a moving semi while installing huge plastic letters over a busy loading dock. Whee!

Thanks, Nicole!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)