I'll bet you've always wondered how to make your own pair of retro space puppets. Well, now you can sew Andy Astronaut and Mandy Martian from this handy pattern and have hours of fun re-enacting bad science-fiction films with them.

[Link: How to Make Space Puppets]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

World of Kane continues to dig up brilliant stuff, like this fine pair of posts on British singer, Anthony Newley and his lyrical partner, Leslie Bricusse. Newley, while not technically a great singer, brought a completely over-the-top delivery to songs like "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off", and my favorite, The Joker, which features incredible horn charts over a catchy guitar riff, with Bricusse's overly-maudlin lyrics icing the musical cake:

There's always a funny man in the game
But he's only funny by mistake
But everyone laughs at him, just the same
They don't see his lonely heart break
They don't care as long as there is a jester, just a fool
As foolish as he can be
There's always a joker, that's a rule
But fate deals the hand and I see
The joker is me

Newley's definitely an acquired taste, but his unbelievably melodramatic songs keeps drawing you back like a rubbernecker at a car wreck.

And don't miss the clips of Sammy Davis Jr. smooching Newley's ass along with Hugh Hefner and Bill Cosby on Playboy After Dark. Nobody could get his nose up someone's sphincter farther than Sammy.

[Link: Anthony Newley: the RCA Years]
[Link: Sammy Sings Newley]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Click to Embiggen
It's been quite a while since I've found anything worthy of adding to my Vintage Oceania collection, but today I stumbled upon this lovely illustration from the April 29, 1871 issue of Harper's Weekly, that depicts a Maori war canoe race in New Zealand. I really like the feathered, big-nosed figurehead on the prow. I wonder who the artist was? Unfortunately, I can't find any signature.

UPDATE: one of my sharp-eyed readers located the artist's signature at the bottom lefthand side of the illustration. After looking at it under high magnification, I've determined that it's "G. Durand", a 19th-century engraver who did indeed work for Harper's.

[Link: Vintage Oceania gallery]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Check out these great advertisments from Aeroflot's 1968 News for Travellers.

Back in 1966, I flew Aeroflot between Moscow and Leningrad with my parents, and it was indeed a most memorable, if not exactly enjoyable, experience: we suffered through terrifying turbulence that caused the borscht to slop out of our bowls and into our laps, and ugly Babushka stewardesses covered with hairy moles, who looked like wicked witches straight out of fairy tales (except for their pillbox hats and white gloves). And yes, they really did have wooden tables like those shown in the ad.

[Link: John-C's Flickr Set][via Schadenfreudian Therapy]
[Link: Moscow Postcards: 1966]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)