Docmarvy relaunches from Texas, and there's always room...
05/07/08 07:19 PM Filed in: Retro
Hey everyone. Like mononucleosis, I'm back without
warning or reason.
Allow me to quickly recap: After the last post I was hastily relocated to Texas. I guess that's just the nature of the witness relocation program... er, I, uh... mean... business.
So I took a couple months off from maintaining docmarvy.com to get myself situated and to work on some of the parts of the blog. In that time I almost abandoned this obvious vanity project, but then like a bolt of lightening I got an email from a Creighton student doing her thesis on Omaha nightclubs of the 50's and 60's and she ran across what has easily been my most popular blog post. Read the comments, it's hilarious. An 85 year old grandmother read my filthy writings. I'm proud and ashamed all at the same time.
So I revived the site and am fully renewed to update it on a twice-a-week schedule and include new features like Found Audio! (I ran across a ton of my old cassettes during the move) and tons more of my making fun of weird stuff I find in old books and magazines. Making the most of my $60 scanner, that's what docmarvy.com is all about. That and making cheap jokes at the expense of other people's hard work.
So let's get on with it, shall we? After all there's always room... for Jell-O!
So I also found stacks and stacks of funky old cookbooks during the move. This was at the top of the stack, so I warmed up the tubes in my scanner (not to be confused with the truck-filled tubes that comprise the internet) and got down to bee's wax.
Reasonably harmless, right? I mean... it's the new Joys of Jell-O. The name is benign and the desserts on the cover are charmingly anachronistic. But what horrors await inside? I'll give you a hint, this was published in 1973.
Totally innocent. A pre-MILF-era mom adding 12 cups of refined white sugar to a warm bowl of strawberry Jell-O where her son, wearing his "frumpy lesbian activewear" sweatshirt, eagerly awaits adding the peach, er... uh, cantaloupe (?) slices to make a delicious high fructose dessert concoction. Everything is cool so far.
It's worth describing the recipe pages, they're in a mixture of standard Helvetica and a Veer-quality script for the chapters (just like on the cover). It's actually laid out quite nice. But the photography? Well... it was 1973.
And nowhere is that more evident when, at the start of the chapter "Bring on the Super Desserts" you're introduced to this lovely couple:
"Hi! We're here for the key party! And we brought Jell-O!"
Great. They're into sploshing. Try as you might to pretend it doesn't happen, these two "do it." Because it was the 70's I can only imagine that their lovin' was a sweaty tangle of barley-and-sweat scented muskiness that left everyone involved feeling sticky and with rugburn and errant pieces of orange shag carpeting stuck to their backs.
Also... there was the Jell-O.
And Jell-O is about desserts, no? In fact, they're "Centerpiece Desserts."
Case in point:
I have no beef with the lower dessert (assuming it contains no beef -- foreshadowing!), but the cake-plated one? Say what you will about shiny amber rings of Hollywood-quality vomit in suspended animation, but to me it doesn't scream "tasty". The candlelight does lend an air of old world sophistication. You know, back when people didn't know any better.
Further down the table what have we got? A pie containing the pink-er, more active slime from the second Ghostbusters film, an amber ring of banana slices in the background, and then there's the real eye catcher. You know those overpriced scented decorative soaps they sell at Whole Foods and other fancypants retailers? Well now you know what they start life as: a stained glass shame cylinder. It's the dessert too mod to eat. And that's okay, because you know it's so "creamy" that you're going to be hocking up multi-color phlegm wads for the next week. Enjoy!
You know why this has been too easy so far? Because thus far all these desserts have involved fruit of one kind or another. Fruit is okay. It's sweet. Not like, say... vegetables. Not like, say... the Green Goddess Salad Bowl:
Oh but wait. The avocado slices are merely the beginning. This also contains Garlic Salt, Sour Cream, Mayonnaise, Vinegar, Salad Greens, CRAB MEAT, and ANCHOVIES! Yes, the smoked fish that the mentally challenged enjoy on their pizzas and crab meat are incorporated with... LIME JELL-O. So, yeah. Those bricks that look like jaundiced tofu. Nope, that there is sour cream and mayo infused Lime Jell-O. Commence to barfin'.
But certainly nobody would put land animals in Jell-O, right? RIGHT!?!
Say hello to Chicken Mousse. Lemon Jell-O, Chicken Broth, and no reason to ever want to enjoy food again are most of what goes into this atrocity before mankind. Eat it? I couldn't MAKE IT without barfing. No wonder everyone was thinner in the 70's. Look at what they had to eat!
It probably doesn't help that the plates look like they were designed by H.R. Geiger.
There was also a lemon Jell-O mold filled with hard boiled eggs and diced ham. But it was too gruesome to scan. I am NOT making that up.
Back to more veggies!
Silicone breast implant? You wish! It's radishes, cucumbers, celery, green peppers and lemon Jell-O. Or so the pod creatures from outer space would like you to believe, until their pods open at your dinner table and the face suckers ram their ovipositors down your throat. (Hmmm... lots of Geiger references today.) Serve with French dressing or mayo. Or better yet, just throw it right in the toilet, because it will be there sooner rather than later no matter what.
If you are inferring that this lovely couple should ingest what is on this table, which for the record is Salmon Dill Mousse and Creamy Bleu Cheese Salad, then you sir are a racist.
Why is there fruit all around that beige bike helmet?
Is that a centerpiece for Lance Armstrong? Bleah.
The next section is "Especially for Junior Cooks," and they couldn't be more thrilled:
The kid on the right is pretty sure you should try that. You just KNOW that little bastard peed in it. You just KNOW IT! That's why all his little friends are giggling smugly to themselves. Well thank you, no, Timmy. I'll take a pass.
Things you never thought of is the title of this section. But really, outside of a little bowl with plain flavored Jell-O in it, I never would have thought of any of this shit. Marzipan? Cinnamon Glazed Apples? No sir, I would not have thought Jell-O played a part in these. And in case you missed it, there's a tray of Glazed Hors d'Oeuvres. With shrimp and olives and avocado and to the best of my knowledge a human ear. But hey, it's glazed in Jell-O, so wolf it down!
And that's more or less the high points of the Joys of Jell-O. On the back cover here Jell-O was eerily prescient in the oncoming cranberry martini craze that swept the Sex and the City-set a few years ago. The only difference is I think most bartenders stuck to Vodka and Cranberry juice, eschewing the Jell-O component altogether. But hey, you win some, you lose some.
That's all for now. I'm back in a big way, kids. Prepare thy-selves for a bigger, meatier, moister docmarvy.com than you ever had before. Give love in the Comments.
Until next time, cowboys and cowgirls...
Huzzah!
Allow me to quickly recap: After the last post I was hastily relocated to Texas. I guess that's just the nature of the witness relocation program... er, I, uh... mean... business.
So I took a couple months off from maintaining docmarvy.com to get myself situated and to work on some of the parts of the blog. In that time I almost abandoned this obvious vanity project, but then like a bolt of lightening I got an email from a Creighton student doing her thesis on Omaha nightclubs of the 50's and 60's and she ran across what has easily been my most popular blog post. Read the comments, it's hilarious. An 85 year old grandmother read my filthy writings. I'm proud and ashamed all at the same time.
So I revived the site and am fully renewed to update it on a twice-a-week schedule and include new features like Found Audio! (I ran across a ton of my old cassettes during the move) and tons more of my making fun of weird stuff I find in old books and magazines. Making the most of my $60 scanner, that's what docmarvy.com is all about. That and making cheap jokes at the expense of other people's hard work.
So let's get on with it, shall we? After all there's always room... for Jell-O!
So I also found stacks and stacks of funky old cookbooks during the move. This was at the top of the stack, so I warmed up the tubes in my scanner (not to be confused with the truck-filled tubes that comprise the internet) and got down to bee's wax.
Reasonably harmless, right? I mean... it's the new Joys of Jell-O. The name is benign and the desserts on the cover are charmingly anachronistic. But what horrors await inside? I'll give you a hint, this was published in 1973.
Totally innocent. A pre-MILF-era mom adding 12 cups of refined white sugar to a warm bowl of strawberry Jell-O where her son, wearing his "frumpy lesbian activewear" sweatshirt, eagerly awaits adding the peach, er... uh, cantaloupe (?) slices to make a delicious high fructose dessert concoction. Everything is cool so far.
It's worth describing the recipe pages, they're in a mixture of standard Helvetica and a Veer-quality script for the chapters (just like on the cover). It's actually laid out quite nice. But the photography? Well... it was 1973.
And nowhere is that more evident when, at the start of the chapter "Bring on the Super Desserts" you're introduced to this lovely couple:
"Hi! We're here for the key party! And we brought Jell-O!"
Great. They're into sploshing. Try as you might to pretend it doesn't happen, these two "do it." Because it was the 70's I can only imagine that their lovin' was a sweaty tangle of barley-and-sweat scented muskiness that left everyone involved feeling sticky and with rugburn and errant pieces of orange shag carpeting stuck to their backs.
Also... there was the Jell-O.
And Jell-O is about desserts, no? In fact, they're "Centerpiece Desserts."
Case in point:
I have no beef with the lower dessert (assuming it contains no beef -- foreshadowing!), but the cake-plated one? Say what you will about shiny amber rings of Hollywood-quality vomit in suspended animation, but to me it doesn't scream "tasty". The candlelight does lend an air of old world sophistication. You know, back when people didn't know any better.
Further down the table what have we got? A pie containing the pink-er, more active slime from the second Ghostbusters film, an amber ring of banana slices in the background, and then there's the real eye catcher. You know those overpriced scented decorative soaps they sell at Whole Foods and other fancypants retailers? Well now you know what they start life as: a stained glass shame cylinder. It's the dessert too mod to eat. And that's okay, because you know it's so "creamy" that you're going to be hocking up multi-color phlegm wads for the next week. Enjoy!
You know why this has been too easy so far? Because thus far all these desserts have involved fruit of one kind or another. Fruit is okay. It's sweet. Not like, say... vegetables. Not like, say... the Green Goddess Salad Bowl:
Oh but wait. The avocado slices are merely the beginning. This also contains Garlic Salt, Sour Cream, Mayonnaise, Vinegar, Salad Greens, CRAB MEAT, and ANCHOVIES! Yes, the smoked fish that the mentally challenged enjoy on their pizzas and crab meat are incorporated with... LIME JELL-O. So, yeah. Those bricks that look like jaundiced tofu. Nope, that there is sour cream and mayo infused Lime Jell-O. Commence to barfin'.
But certainly nobody would put land animals in Jell-O, right? RIGHT!?!
Say hello to Chicken Mousse. Lemon Jell-O, Chicken Broth, and no reason to ever want to enjoy food again are most of what goes into this atrocity before mankind. Eat it? I couldn't MAKE IT without barfing. No wonder everyone was thinner in the 70's. Look at what they had to eat!
It probably doesn't help that the plates look like they were designed by H.R. Geiger.
There was also a lemon Jell-O mold filled with hard boiled eggs and diced ham. But it was too gruesome to scan. I am NOT making that up.
Back to more veggies!
Silicone breast implant? You wish! It's radishes, cucumbers, celery, green peppers and lemon Jell-O. Or so the pod creatures from outer space would like you to believe, until their pods open at your dinner table and the face suckers ram their ovipositors down your throat. (Hmmm... lots of Geiger references today.) Serve with French dressing or mayo. Or better yet, just throw it right in the toilet, because it will be there sooner rather than later no matter what.
If you are inferring that this lovely couple should ingest what is on this table, which for the record is Salmon Dill Mousse and Creamy Bleu Cheese Salad, then you sir are a racist.
Why is there fruit all around that beige bike helmet?
Is that a centerpiece for Lance Armstrong? Bleah.
The next section is "Especially for Junior Cooks," and they couldn't be more thrilled:
The kid on the right is pretty sure you should try that. You just KNOW that little bastard peed in it. You just KNOW IT! That's why all his little friends are giggling smugly to themselves. Well thank you, no, Timmy. I'll take a pass.
Things you never thought of is the title of this section. But really, outside of a little bowl with plain flavored Jell-O in it, I never would have thought of any of this shit. Marzipan? Cinnamon Glazed Apples? No sir, I would not have thought Jell-O played a part in these. And in case you missed it, there's a tray of Glazed Hors d'Oeuvres. With shrimp and olives and avocado and to the best of my knowledge a human ear. But hey, it's glazed in Jell-O, so wolf it down!
And that's more or less the high points of the Joys of Jell-O. On the back cover here Jell-O was eerily prescient in the oncoming cranberry martini craze that swept the Sex and the City-set a few years ago. The only difference is I think most bartenders stuck to Vodka and Cranberry juice, eschewing the Jell-O component altogether. But hey, you win some, you lose some.
That's all for now. I'm back in a big way, kids. Prepare thy-selves for a bigger, meatier, moister docmarvy.com than you ever had before. Give love in the Comments.
Until next time, cowboys and cowgirls...
Huzzah!
|