[i.]
A sampling of Tower Records-themed postcards, circa 2000:
Click through for artist credits.
The best one is the one on the far left right, with the stilettos and the legs and the ai-yi-yi. Marketing pundits have lauded Tower for their iconic yellow-and-red plastic bags as a subversively viral campaign; even when the bags are trashed, stuffed into overflowing rubbish bins, flying around in tiny thermal vortexes, stuck to the bottom of platform shoes, their advertising power still isn’t diminished a bit.
And back in the day, those things were everywhere.
[ii.]
Tofu scramble in Grandma’s cast iron skillet:
Tofu, crimini mushrooms, grated carrot, garlic, turmeric, cumin, paprika, salt, nutritional yeast, olive oil, lemon juice, thyme.
[iii.]
A selection of used book shop scores:
All these are remarkable examples of what we would call “retro-futurism” today, and what was probably lagging just a little behind the cutting edge of the time. Phallic rockets, silver pressure suits, and bright accent colors abound, but so do interesting decorative designs, like the pseudo-fractals for the “On The Symb-Socket Circuit” cover, and sharp complementary colors like the Hallowe’en theme for “Beyond The Black Enigma” and the Xmas striping for “The Brain-Stealers.” (which also features another hallmark of sci-fi cover art that would burgeon into the 60s and 70s, the strategically covered nude female form)
However, you can’t beat the copy for “The Four Day Weekend” for hack and pulp fiction misogyny at its best: “What happens to a man when a woman is the boss even in the 21st Century?”
The hilarity continues on the back cover: “And into this incredible situation Charles Henry Hyde was thrust, with a shrew of a wife named Agnes who nagged like it was 1966…”
STOP IT YOU’RE KILLING ME
⎋
