If at this point in your life you have still not read The Sun Also Rises there’s no need to berate yourself. The great thing about great books you have not yet read is that you are in for a treat when you finally do get around to them. After all, if we had already consumed every iconic novel we might be awfully accomplished but it would also take away that magical frisson that comes from the first-time discovery of something really special.
Here’s Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson duetting on the latter’s all-time great hit, “Sunday Morning Coming Down”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdMmcciQs8I
Don’t it just capture that sweet melancholy that Sunday seems to embody, especially after a rowdy Saturday night? Just says it all really.
In memoriam of a family friend of tomvox’s we post this New York Times obit of self-taught graphic arts legend, one of the true “Mad Men” in 1960s and 70s advertising and a stalwart at the School of Visual Arts for over 50 years, Tony Palladino.
Tony Palladino, an innovative graphic designer and illustrator who created one of the most recognizable typographic titles in publishing and film history, the off-kilter, violently slashed block-letter rendering of “Psycho,” died on May 14 in Manhattan. He was 84.
Mr. Palladino’s conception for “Psycho” originally appeared on the book jacket for Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of that title, published by Simon & Schuster. For his 1960 film adaptation, Alfred Hitchcock purchased the rights to the lettering for its promotion, which influenced the opening credit sequence created by Saul Bass.
Mr. Palladino said the design — stark white letters torn and seemingly pasted together against a black background to resemble a ransom note — was intended to illustrate typographically the homicidal madness of the novel’s protagonist, Norman Bates.
“How do you do a better image of ‘Psycho’ than the word itself?” he said.
Read the complete NY Times obituary for this highly accomplished man here.
We know a lot of you do your blog reading on a mobile device and we wanted to make that experience cleaner, quicker and richer (as they say in browser-speak). So we’ve created a mobile version of the site that’s easy to navigate and easy on the eyes, making it a breeze to track topics at a glance with associated thumbnails. You don’t have to do anything on your end, just continue to go to our bookmark on your mobile device and the new format will automatically kick in. And of course you can still access the full desktop version from a link at the bottom of the page if you prefer.
We hope this makes it easier for you to keep up with MFL and a more enjoyable experience when you’re on the go. And we’ll keep striving to constantly improve the site with our readers in mind — however gradual that may be since we are mainly a pack of beer drinking luddites — because we appreciate you spending a little of your valuable time with us. Thanks as always for dropping by and we hope you enjoy MFL mobile.
And now for putting up with such a dry blog announcement, without further ado, here’s The Who:
The advent of Rolex’s GMT-Master in 1955 was the culmination of a creative arms race in the Swiss watch industry to come up with unique complications for telling time in two different timezones. The newly-dawned jet airliner age enabled intercontinental travel to explode in popularity and created demand for this complication in a wristwatch . A dual timezone watch, therefore, became a tool for the sophisticated world traveling gentleman or international man of action and was marketed by the manufacturers to exactly that putative clientele. Among the most enduring alternatives to an extra fixed 24-hour hand was the concept of rotating time zone discs or bezels with the names of cities representing the world’s different temporal regions. And among the handsomest and most clever produced during this burst of invention was the original Tissot “Navigator” World Time watch, which debuted in 1953 and therefore predates the GMT-Master by a few years.
Featuring an oversized 36mm x 44mm beefy lug screwed steel case (sometimes also found in gold top or solid gold) the Navigator achieved its dual time capabilities via an inner rotating world time disc that was calibrated to the 24-hour scale on the face of the watch. Continue reading
There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the Hoodoo Gurus but they were one of the most purely fun bands to emerge from the often gloomy 1980s music scene (Depeche Mode they are not). Hailing from Australia and featuring a distinctly surf & garage influenced brand of guitar rock, the Gurus pumped out catchy hit after catchy hit for college radio even if they never quite hit the big time Stateside. The main asset for the HG’s was their chief songwriter and inimitably adenoidal, ever-so-slightly kitschy singer David Faulkner and his well-penned half sincere/half ironic tributes to 60s Americana, Australiana and disposable pop culture in general.
Perhaps the one essential album would be their extra strong sophomore effort, 1985’s Mars Needs Guitars, but really there are one or two great tracks on pretty much every Gurus album. So much so that I’d recommend tracking down the now out-of-print 2-disc CD compilation, Ampology. Because sometimes all you want to do is hear the hits and Ampology distills down the HG’s prodigious output to its essential pop-rock essence just as any well-chosen greatest hits collection should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmwIZUR1Kl8
Not really a hard rock band but definitely a band that rocks hard without taking itself too seriously, the Hoodoo Gurus are well worth rediscovering and just in time for summer’s tasty waves and beach cookouts, as well. Soon enough you and your mates may well find yourselves singing “Like wow-Wipeout!” at the end of a pleasantly sunburnt day.
An intense and contentious weekend was capped off by a thrilling race through the streets of Monte Carlo. Come with me below the fold to find out the results of this most classic and glamorous of all Grands Prix…
The Australian triple Formula 1 World Champion Sir Jack Brabham has passed away at the age of 88. Among his many accomplishments, Sir Jack was the first and only man to win the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships in a car of his own design (1966).
From his son David, a fantastic racer in his own right:
What more can one say? Sir Jack raced in the greatest era of Formula 1 against the best drivers, won 3 championships, left on his own terms and lived to become a beloved figure in his golden years. He may have departed this world but he goes on now to join his rivals and friends Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt among others in that great paddock in the sky. What a legacy and we should all be as lucky to shuffle off this mortal coil as accomplished and fulfilled as this great man. He truly left nothing undone. Godspeed, Sir Jack.
The word “rare” gets thrown around a lot when folks are pitching vintage watches. But this circa 1952 Omega Seamaster definitely fits the definition: Jumbo 36mm case (90% are 34mm during this era), rare reference that is extremely hard to find (2521), solid 18 karat pink gold with screwed water resistant case, and Chronometer-certified movement and original signed “waffle” dial (very uncommon for a 1950s Seamaster, as almost all the Chronometers for Omega during this era are in the Constellation line). Run these attributes through the Google and you won’t find many matches. In fact, I’ve yet to see another 2521 in pink gold. So not an inexpensive watch by any means. But, as the old saying goes, find me another.
NOW ON SALE! Rare Vintage Omega ref. 2521 18k Pink Gold JUMBO Seamaster Chronometer — Click here for the Timezone Showcase ad with complete description and many more high res pictures. SOLD
Scene from 1964 GP of Holland (Photo by Robert Daley)
The fantastic record of the state-of-the-art cars of this era — thin, gasoline-filled aluminum monocoques surrounding the driver like a casket with a giant engine newly moved to behind his back — pay tribute to the beauty of the Ferraris, Lotuses, BRMs and all the other land rockets of the pre-safety, pre-downforce era. Interspersed throughout are brief profiles of the drivers and circuits written in Daley’s inimitable wry, Hemingway-esque prose. Showing through, as in all his writing on motorsport, is the paradoxical ambivalence of at once being highly attracted to the derring-do of the men’s wondrous achievements as pilots and revulsion at the wonton waste of life inherent during this era of Formula 1, when the death of drivers and spectators was nearly guaranteed several times a season.
Death of Lorenzo Bandini, Monaco, 1967 (Photo by Robert Daley)
In fact, the footnotes to the photos in the closing “Photo Identification” section are practically another book unto themselves, with detailed ruminations about the deaths of Graham Hill by plane accident in the 1970s and Jim Clark at Hockenheim in a Formula 2 race in 1968, among many other anecdotes. And Daley’s quietly devastating recounting of the death of Lorenzo Bandini in a Ferrari at the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix and his journalistic need to photograph it (the horrifying shot of Bandini trapped beneath his burning Ferrari is the fitting endpaper of the book) makes for essential reading in and of itself as a shattering piece of self-reflective journalism, motorsports notwithstanding. In short, along with Cars at Speed, The Cruel Sport is a must have volume for any serious racing fan and anyone who cherishes the bittersweet history of Formula 1 and the men who lived & died it in its most glorious years, as told by its finest, most clear-eyed chronicler.
Check out more of Robert Daley’s life and work at his website, robertdaleyauthor.com.
