People are so darn emotional about the iPhones today. Way back when, those kinds of feelings were reserved for typewriters.
This little gem of a personal essay that ran in The New York Times in 1915.
This is cool, but kind of too much. There are places in the world where people don’t have shoes or pens. They don’t even have iPhones. And here we are making high tech gizmos that pretend to be the low-tech thing that probably would seem high tech to some people in some places.
Or something. Don’t listen to me. I’m just cranky because I don’t have an iPad. I actually have to use pens! Oh, the humanity.
I feel it’s mocking those of us who don’t even have iPads.
I love the iPad. And I love typewriters. So, this thing is kind of blowing my mind.
This Alfred Hitchcock Presents is about half an hour long, but the first minute or so is the part that I thought was Obsolete blog worthy: it features Alfred Hitchcock talking about how a record player could be made to be much simpler and user friendly. All you have to do is turn it into a gramophone! Duh!
Don’t get me wrong: the rest of the episode is definitely worth watching, too. It features some of my favorite things: journalists on typewriters, big clunky phone receivers, pay phone booths, pinball machines (the old kind sans flippers), and Hitchcock pretending to be a Martian. Or maybe he wasn’t really pretending…
I used to listen to this Leroy Anderson song when I was a kid. I had the CD!
Jesus, my husband, pointed me to this clip of Jerry Lewis and his pinky rings performing to the song. Jesus is from Spain. Watching this made me ask a question posed by many, many Americans before me: Why do Europeans thing this guy is so funny?
“I DON’T think it’s funny!” he says as I write this.
Then why is your smile 5-inches wide, goofball?
“Because it was funny when I was a kid! You didn’t think this was funny when you were six? What did you think was funny? Woody Allen?”
Yes. And this explains why I still think that all sperm speaks with a Brooklyn accent.
In recent months I’ve been dabbling in the world of embroidery. Dangerous territory, I know. But I try to use clean needles.
I’ve mostly been making up my own designs as I go, but there are some fun patterns out there that you can buy for pretty cheap. Apparently, obsolete things are especially fun to embroider! Feeling Stitchy just offered up this lovely set of CRT screens she stitched using patterns from the store andwabisabi, which also makes a pattern for a stitched boombox.
This got me curious about what other embroidered images of obsolete objects were available online. Here are some of my findings.
By Lucky Jackson. Original hand embroidered piece on vintage fabric.
Cassette tape pattern by PeptoGirl.
Embroidered Molkeskines by Nowvember.
Embroidered cameras by TinyBazaar.
I’ve given up emoticons. New Years resolution! Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t ENJOY them. Take, for example, this 1972 exercise on a typewriters…
A film by Mitch Ansara: Man Blowing a Bubble (1972) (Monoscope)
In 1970, Smith-Corona and Ghia, designer of racecars, had a baby! Click to read about “The racecar of Typewritters”
(via fuckyeahtypewriters)
Want your Mac to sound like a typewriter? I just downloaded this. It was amusing for a minute. And then it became kind of annoying. I think I’m too fast a typer for it. It sounds like I’m about to bust the machine.
(via fuckyeahtypewriters)
I just found this on Flickr. Wow. When is this from? Who made it? What’s with the letter layout? I have so many questions!
(via zsíta)
No fewer than five people today sent me this article about how Cormac McCarthy is auctioning off his old Olivetti Lettera —the typewriter on which he’s written all of his highly-praised MacArthur-genius-grant-worthy novels. I’m touched that all these people thought of me—they are good folk—but when people tell me I MUST read a certain article or book or pamphlet on safe sex, there’s a part of me that bucks. Don’t tell me what to read, dammit! I will not be put in a box! Besides, I know what happens: there’s nuclear fallout, everyone dies, the son eats the father (Viggo Mortensen!) while watching I Am Legend and then Wall-e shows up and develops a new language based on the symbols found on an odd object stamped with the word Lettera. Then Clive Owen arrives just in time for London to explode and it all ends with everyone singing songs from Hello Dolly. As the credits roll, we see an old man at the Genius Bar asking for a bourbon, neat, with a MacBook Pro on the side.
My friend and general girl-crush Melena Ryzik (aka the NYT’s Urban Eye) did this funny piece on… people who make siren sounds and visit from the moon. All in a day’s work. BUT, did you know: visitors from the moon take direction via typewriter? Yuh-huh!
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MEET THE AUTHOR
Anna Grossman is writing this bio in the third person. She is a New York-based freelance writer specializing in lifestyle and entertainment features. She is 5'7" and has been described as "nice." Su esposo, Jesus, enseñandola Espanol. Email her if you feel like it: GrossmanAJ@Gmail.com
MEET THE ILLUSTRATOR
James Gulliver Hancock is an internationally acclaimed artist who crosses as many mediums as he does borders. James is constantly on the move, having been involved in artist projects and residencies in Indonesia, Austria, France, the U.K. and America. He is currently located in Los Angeles and works on projects in Europe, America and Australia. His work is as varied as his travels, encompassing editorial illustration for magazines, commissions for music group artwork and animations, work with disabled children on logo designs, creating gigantic set illustrations for performances and TV.
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