Unsafe At Any Speed

So this is precisely what it looks like: A car with a record player mounted under the dash. They were popular options in the 1950s when clear channel radio stations were still limited and when commuting from your nascent suburban community into the city for work was still new and exciting. The Philips version pictured above-bottom seems to work a bit like a CD player in that it sucks the disc in, but most of the devices required drivers to actually drop the needle on the record. Since we can hardly be trusted to keep control of our cocktail while flipping the record (much less positioning the needle), this seems like a particularly bad idea.

File this alongside the SPCA-unapproved dog riding sack in the "History of Bad Ideas: The Eisenhower Years"

Jane Child: Still Scary After All These Years

So we were all set to write a post loosely titled "Fashioning the Third Wave" about the feminist punk and new wave fashions of the late 1970s - early 1980s when, during our search for photos of Poly Styrene and The Slits, we somehow came across an image of Jane Child that stopped us dead in our tracks. Even after all these years, this woman still scares the shit out us. The muscles, the hair, the 'mystical' Indian earring nose chain. It all conspires to at once totally date her and totally construct her as a curious creature of the future. Whether she emerged from beyond Thunderdome or from behind the Iron Curtain, we don't know, but we are certain that "I Don't Want To Fall In Love" is still as horrid today as it was 20 years ago. Enjoy (or, don't):