Good call Freeman-W, Jan. 1964

So a couple months after the Kennedy assassination, the Freeman-Washington Insurance Agency admen stuck a wet finger in the blowin' wind, divined the decade's oncoming turbulence, and fast-tracked a campaign touting their riot coverage.  Sure, riot coverage appears to be a joke here.  Prior to the 60s, riot-incurred damage would have most likely been a mere speck on the old actuary table, statistically safe from ever being paid out on a home owner policy.  How many home owners considered such coverage necessary by 1970?

No doubt sometime around 1968 insurance companies began to fear the tipping point was fast approaching where payouts were no longer offset by fear-mongered sales.  Of course, by then who needed funny print ads when the nightly news could promote sales for free?


For a more sober look at this item in historical context, click here.

Plus ça change, Apr. 1963

A Mr. Gibbs recently found Mr. Salinger's supply of spectacles and, on a lark, passed them out around Scandinavia.

View this article in historical context here.

Too sweet by half, Sept. 1923

Last August 17 our seven-year old boy became one of the 40 kids in the U.S. diagnosed with diabetes each day.  Having the autoimmune type of diabetes (Type 1, or Juveline Diabetes), his body no longer produces the insulin needed to take sugar from his blood to be used or stored.  Now our family acts as his pancreas; we constantly check and log his blood sugar readings, his carbohydrate intake and administer the insulin shots he needs throughout the day. 

While injecting insulin is not a cure, it is far, far better than the alternative faced prior to its introduction in the early 1920s.  While its delivery systems are becoming refined, and similarly, its chemical efficiency, the basics of successful Type 1 diabetic maintenance apparently have not had a "miraculous leap forward" since the Jazz Age, let alone a cure.  Always closer, but a cure is due, tout de suite.

There's always legal room for jello, Feb. 1920

Apparently, alcoholic jello shots were legal during prohibition since one couldn't "drink" them and they hadn't been invented when the laws were passed. However the jerk doctor who did invent them during the dry years wouldn't share.



To see this Popular Science article in historic context (and a lot about the science and pitfalls of do-it-yourself distillery), click here.

Motown's Burning Bush, May 2004

Kevin Pyle sent this to me a while back and reminded me it was too cool not to share:  The Metro Times Century of Sound -- a Detroit music family tree.  It's no surprise the tree looks more like fire given the number of hot names aflame, each flicker crackling another to higher, brighter, smokin' heat.

Just look at all the great stuff here in this small sample:  Andre "Baconfat" Williams is not far from the MC5, Brownsville Station, Grand Funk, Iggy Pop, Ted Nugent, Seger, Mitch Ryder as well nugget-hatchers the Woolies, Unrelated Segments and ? and the Mysterians...Rationals, well, I don't need to name 'em all off.



Find the whole thing at the paper's website here.

Don't forget to read other music-related items at MangMade Records, too!

So It Seems, Aug. 1952

While we're getting a few things sorted out, check out this Monday Cartoon Day post from The Fabulous Fifties blog which I wish to share and place here for safe keeping when I have time to circle back. It features a collection of Lou Cameron's So It Seems newspaper strips which, as noted there, have an EC Comics flavor to them (and apparent similar use of the LeRoy lettering system). I'm downloading and looking forward to receiving a hardcopy of Alter Ego #86 for Ger Apeldoorn's article on imitators of EC Comics' Mad.

Around the same time Kurtzman started Mad, comic artist Lou Cameron did
a short-lived satirical newspaper strip called So It Seems. The titles
seems to be a parody of the many 'interesting facts' panels that were
around, such as Ripley's Believe It Or Not and John Hix Strange As It
Seems, but it was more of a 'statement and sample' series, along the
lines of those that were later done for the magazine Mad.

Well blown me down! Popeye controversy, 1992

From the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog:

In 1992, London, who, at that point, was both writing and drawing the strip for six years, introduced a Home Shopping Club storyline for Olive Oyl. Thus begins the below controversial and, so far as I understand, final three weeks of the Popeye strip under London's direction. They're scanned from copies of proofsheets, so the quality is not great.