The Hills
Perez Hilton
How I Met Your Mother
Gossip Girl
John Mayer

We're still pretty fucking goofy.

But this begs the question: were sandwiches ever not popular? I mean, I've not done the research here but they are quite good. Bread, meat, cheese, assorted veggery.

Excuse me while I go make one.

To be fair, I also teeter on the edge of hysteria when wrapping dozens upon dozens of sandwiches.

Pink is for girls! It's time for the geighs to give it back....

Do The Skate = American Apparel? Maybe it's just the Helvetica.

Dammit, Gayyker, I was just going to post the same thing.

@Gayyker: Ha. I was thinking of doing this as an American Apparel- parallel post but I couldn't find enough examples. Still, yes. Obvious predecessor.

The sandwich lady and her man look like an early Enzyte commerical

Meet The Flintstones for a whole new idea in low-cost transportation

It's all fun and games until the yellow-clad housewife with the crazed gleam in her eyes cuts off dopey hubby's air supply in one lightening-quick Saran Wrap assault before enjoying a delicious sandwich with mayo the way she likes it, GODAMNIT.

@lawyergay: Who doesn't. Soooo many carbs.

I have a sudden, overpowering urge to listen to the Ray Conniff Orchestra.

I like the pink is for girls poster, very striking.

McMahon and Tate created all of these.

Tareyton: A Whole New Excuse to Beat Your Wife!

[Poor grammar in banner headline also noted.]

@collegecallgirl: Totally, especially since he's all like, "Everything alright there, honey?" in that plummy baritone of his that she just CAN'

Meet the Boy Scouts! A whole new idea in low cost_____.

I think Tareyton lady's smoking more than just activated charcoal filtered cigarettes. Look at those dilated pupils!

want.pink.scout. For sandwiches.

@lawyergay: oops...misfire

CAN'T FUCKING STAND ANYMORE!

sorry about that.

Your theory about mass advertising being behind the coolness curve is roundly disproven by the very excellent "The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism" by Thomas Frank. One can easily go through magazines right now and pick out equally uncool ads as those from the 50s and 60s, but any of the cooler lifestyle magazines will have ultra-hip advertising that has an active dialogue with "real cutting-edge culture."

And I apologize for this moment of earnestness, it's been a long day.

Where's Lawrence Welk?!?

@CopyofBlueBoy: Don't forget to add a few Percy Faith numbers to the dance mix.

"Uh honey - it's just Saran Wrap. Please put it down. There's nobody out there. Honey?"

@lawyergay: I got and enjoyed the gist.

The white filter gives you mesothelioma.

The black filter gives you black lung.

Together, they can't figure out why dinner wasn't on the table when they got home.

@Clare: Domestic violence will have that effect on you.

@unutterable: That's why I specified "mass media advertising" instead of more niche advertising from the cooler lifestyle mags you're talking about. Which can be cool. But still evil.

Oooh, my mom used to smoke those Tareytons! I used to sneak them from her all the time. They were so disgusting with that nasty charcoal filter. I was so glad when she finally switched to Marlboros.

@collegecallgirl: Thanks. Execution is everything.

IH's consumer division made the best cars ever.

Also, yeah, American Apparel, if they were naked it would be perfect as their limbs block their naughtiest parts, just barely.

@CopyofBlueboy: the ads are amazingly unbelievably blindingly sadly sadly sadly white
the ads

also, why the black eye on teh smoker? are they advocating domestic violence? is it the smoke of the beaten wife demographic?

@dado: darrin, you're fired

@disslexic: @if_i_only_had_a_heart: And a little Jackie Gleason Orchestra, too. Ahhh, how sweet it is.

WHY ARE YOU MAKING SO MANY SANDWICHES???

@MrInBetween: I thought it was a young Mel Gibson.

@MrInBetween: Yep. Without a doubt that is the young Mark Shields, in his earlier career as a commercial artist's model. Not too many people are aware that that's how he got his start. As a child he posed for Norman Rockwell.

We can make sandwiches.

Out here on the dance floor.

After she wraps those sandwiches, she's going to make a dress out of the saran wrap. That's why they're smiling their stunted, sexy smiles.

@famousauthor: Tareyton had ads featuring men with black eyes, too. It was just about the punchin' for your right to smoke your fave shitty cig, which, given the middle-class white-breadyness of the models in these ads, made them a goof in their day.

@CopyofBlueboy: Ray Conniff ROCKS. I wanted to be one of his singers -- those folks who hummed on tracks.

@collegecallgirl: When I first read that I thought of the wife cutting of his air supply at the end -- so she could finally go on a cruise and maybe meet one of the oldster male dance escorts.

is it just me, or does every man in these ads look deep-in-the-closet?

the second guy is especially creepy -- as if rock hudson and jay leno had a baby.

@donmiguel: Me too. But which singers? The ones who go "Ba ba da da ba ba ba bow!" or the ones who sang the actual songs? My song favorite Ray Conniff Singers is "The Sweetest Sound"....it's the creepiest. It would be good for a horror sequence, where someone's getting tortured in a sex dungeon or something. Wait, what?

@CopyofBlueboy: I apologize for my incoherence. Sex dungeons and Ray Conniff give me the vapors.

@meechybee: As were, if memory serves, a lot of the guys who worked in advertising. (Wasn't that Dennis Quaid's job in Far From Heaven?)

Ah, for the bad old days when the only thing that was Goth was the Addams Family.

Funny thing: I just saw that dancing couple on the golf course. They're still wearing the same clothes, though they've greyed and shrived a little.