Plastic Man pilot
The pilot for the new Plastic Man cartoon series on Cartoon Network looks great. Link (Thanks, Matter Eater Lad!)
Mr Jalopy's gum machines
At Foo Camp this year, Mr Jalopy brought a gum machine rack, but instead of selling gum and toys, the plastic bubbles sold spare parts, like gears, tiny motors, and switches. One gum machine sold a little booklet that he wrote with tips on buying a used car. Brilliant! Here's a Flikr photo set -- one of the photos shows David Pescovitz posing next to the machines. Link
Cool car show
LinkArtist and hotrodder Robert Williams points to the example of the Indian longrifle as one of many instances of humans’ interaction with, and need to transform, the impersonal products of the Industrial Revolution into something more relatable, more human, something with a soul. Hot rodding and car customization are a part of this long history, too. Perhaps the most perfect example, in fact.
The history of the lowrider in Hispanic culture is long and storied, and parallels neatly with the history of hot rodding, sometimes intertwining, and sometimes traveling far afield.
Animated version of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn"
A while back I posted a link to artist Jim Woodring's discovery of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn," which depicts Sluggo floating blissfully in the air, uttering the word "No."
A little while later, a fellow sent us a photo of the new tattoo he got of the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn."
Today, Coop sent me a link to this terrific animation inspired by the "Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn," with a Gabby Pahinui soundtrack (I think) accompanied by quotes about the tao from Alan Watts (again, I think). Link
Reader comment:
Gary says: "Fyi, the Gabby song that’s on the Sluggo video is Pu’uanhulu."
Rigged carny game: The Scissor Bucket
This weekend I looked at a ball toss carnival game from the 1930s. It belongs to a woman who works at O'Reilly (publishers of Make). She got it from her grandfather who used it in carnivals in the 1930s and 1940s.
It's a rigged game, because there is some kind of mechanism in it that the operator can secretly activate, which all but ensures the ball will bounce out of the bucket when the mark tosses it in. We were going to take the thing apart to see if we could discover the mechanism, but this was during O'Reilly's annual Foo Camp and so there were so many other exciting things happening that we forgot to disassemble it.
Carnys call these "alibi games," because the operator uses a long litany of excuses to keep the mark from giving up in disgust, and encouraging him to dig more money out of his wallet and try "just one more time" to win a stuffed animal that his girlfriend doesn't even really want.
Does anyone know how this game works? I'm wondering if there might not even be a mechanism -- maybe the carny just secretly switched between different balls: a soft one that thudded against the backboard and dropped through the win hole, and a hard one that bounced off the backboard.
UPDATE: SECRET REVEALED! We took the machine apart and took photos and a video of the mechanism. I also wrote about it in Make magazine. Email me if you know the answer and I'll post it here. Link
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