The Retro Blog

[via vintage ads]

[via vintage ads]

For those who will miss Golden Girl Bea Arthur as much as I, check out this post from Neatorama devoted to little known facts about the girl.
One of my favorite little known fact about Bea Arthur is that she used to run the cantina on Tatooine. Here’s a clip from the Star Wars Holiday Special. [...]

Ok, Richard Simmons is not retro. But he does sweat to the oldies. It’s a stretch, I know. I had to post this though. I can remember being a little kid and watching a “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” tape we had repeatedly mostly because I liked the music and the funny little man with the [...]

So you’re trying to get good, red-blooded, cow boy hat wearing Americans to eat meat.What image do you need? Apparently the meat council thought the best way to do this was to trace a Nazi propaganda poster. Great job, meat council! [via totally looks like]

The Chicago Tribune has posted yet another wonderful collection of retro photographs, this one of secretaries. This is Marianne Minder and she’s transcribing letters from an “electronic voice recording machine” in 1963.

Click to see a close up.
Apparently being a good wife mostly involves using Swan Soap. Who knew life could be so “swanderful”? [via vintage ads]

On April 20th, 1939, Billie Holiday first recorded “Strange Fruit.” The song was originally a poem written by Abel Meeropol inspired by the famous photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. (An interesting side note: Meeropol adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). Despite being afraid of backlash, Billie Holiday [...]

This well made 50s educational parody about the do’s and don’ts of Facebook pretty much sums up why I don’t bother with having an account there. I wish my computer looked like the one in this movie, though. [via neatorama]

This comes a little late, but Modern Mechanix has some interesting ideas for making animals out of Easter eggs.

Oh Phil Spector. I will never tire of looking at the photo of your crazy hair. I will also never tire of listening to the many wonderful songs you produced in the 1960s. So even though you”re now officially a mean, lady murdering bastard, I’m going to pay tribute to your best work.
Phil started his [...]

I can’t explain why I feel the need to post every picture I come across of kids in gas masks. I just do. That’s a lot of kids in gas masks, eh?
[from flickr user Heidi Heidi Heidi]

If you love 50s musicals and are looking for a more recent take on the genre, Francois Ozon’s 8 Women is pretty fun. It’s a French whodunnit starring Catherine Deneuve.

This trailer doesn’t really do the film justice because it’s one of those awkward things where they sort of try to hide the fact that it’s [...]

All movies should be made this way. [via boing boing]

I’m a sucker for vintage science equipment. What kid didn’t want a lie detector growing up? Oobject has compiled a list of the best looking vintage lie detecters.

 
[via picture is unrelated]

This collection of interior design elements for Barbie by Maryann Roy is just wonderful to look at. It’s amazingly detailed and might give you some nice ideas for your real life home. Retro Renovation has an interview with the designer along with some lovely photos.

Does this look like a scooter with a cannon mounted on it? That’s because it’s a scooter with a cannon mounted on it. Awesome. It seems that after WWII the French military was a little low on funds and they had to improvise a bit. Thus, Vespa of death! More info here. [via neatorama]

Tonight the boy, a friend, and I headed to a Taiwanese restaurant to try stinky tofu. When something has the word “stinky” in its title, I advise that you take the hint and avoid it. I only made it through one and a half pieces, though the boy claimed to sort of like the smell. [...]

Mock Duck is a web collection of cook books picked up at thrift stores. I have a few of the titles on the site in my personal collection. All I have to say about them is: mayonnaise. I do like the design of the above appetizer. The way the bacon wrapped weenies stick out of the giant [...]

This is a clip where the characters boogie down in Germany’s 1960s space opera TV show, Raumpatrouille. It was a very expensive show and lasted only seven episodes. [via boingboing]

That kid has a pretty snazzy drum set. [via boingboing]

7. Slinky was invented by Naval engineer Richard James. He knocked a spring off of a shelf when he was working to develop springs that could keep ship instruments stable in choppy waters. The spring did what a Slinky does… it stepped down to a stack of books, then to the table, and then to the [...]