Easy-Do Parties, Electrically
I’ve always wanted it to be a “frequently asked question” here on Inkstain, but to be honest, no one’s ever expressed any curiosity whatsoever about the Easy-Do Parties Lady who has graced my blog lo these many years. But you should have asked, right?
She’s the cover gal on “Easy-Do Parties Electrically,” a 36-page recipe book from 1960 that I picked up for a quarter years ago at my neighbor Doris’s garage sale. It’s from the era of “live better electrically,” an ad campaign that (I think) was sponsored by General Electric. (Parties are a breeze with portable electric appliances.) She knows how to make “Strawberry Surprise” and “Apple Flip,” and, I mean, just look at her! You can tell she’s got her shit together.
I scanned her and slapped her on Inkstain years ago as an icon because I thought of the blog as a sort of electrical party spot, and she seemed the perfect hostess. I mean, she’s got her shit together.
After the first post-Party Lady Inkstain redesign, my sister Lisa complained that she was gone, so I restored her to her rightful place, and she’s stayed ever since. When I started doing social media, I used her as my first avatar as a lark. That stuck too, partly because I love the whole gender ambiguity thing (I also wear pink socks) so now she’s my “face” on Twitter and Facebook. (I once made someone’s “interesting science women on Twitter” list.)
I mean, look at her! Who wouldn’t want to come to her party? She’s got her shit together!
Ah, those were the days – mom was at the electric stove in her apron happily baking cookies while dad brought home more then enough bacon to sustain the suburban nuclear family. Back in the late ’50’s when the AEC and Disney were telling us that nuclear power was going to make electricity too cheap to meter I was in grade school and had to write a report on the wonderful world of the future, which had a lot to do with a push to get American kids interested in becoming engineers as a result of the national flip out over Sputnik. Among other things I suggested in my report was that before long we’d all be dropping ‘atomic pills’ into the gas tanks of our automobiles to power them, which for what it might be worth was something that had appeared in Motor Trend magazine (April 1951: http://www.motortrend.com/features/archive/112_0711_archive_1965_mako_shark_ii_concept_car/photo_02.html), where in it was said “A professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, who asks to remain nameless, believes that some day atomic cars will be commonplace. …each automobile customer will receive a ‘bound box of fissionable stuff together with pills that will create enough energy to last the life of the car.” Unfortunately I didn’t proof read the report after I’d typed it, so the cars of the future ended up running on ‘atomic piss’, rather then pills – which was an unintentional Freudian slip that didn’t amuse my teacher and that led to some unpredictable consequences, including my discovering that I wasn’t cut out to be a happy worker bee. In any case that was just about the time the Ford motor company introduced the nuclear powered Ford Nucleon (http://davidszondy.com/future/atomic/ford.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon)
“…Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice
And when justice is gone, there’s always force
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom”
Laurie Anderson, “O Superman” (1981)
audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzYu88jIDYs
Ah, the good old days, when commies were commies and jello was jello (and dinner). Hilarious. EPP
No commie ever got a chance to eat a piping hot Swanson TV dinner out of its aluminum tray on a folding TV tray table while watching “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” on the family’s 14″ black and white Emerson …there never would have been a cold war if they had (Tvdinner.jpg?)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Tvdinner.jpg
Ah well, perhaps some things it is best not to know. But I did wonder.
Here’s another snap shot from the golden age of anxiety (http://retrorenovation.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_16/custom/rotator/1953-Kitchenmaid-blue-kitchen-The-Television-Kitchen.jpg) – of course it’s not in the picture but back in those days everyone was living with the prospect of instant thermonuclear annihilation hanging over their heads. Easy to laugh now at those duck and cover drills in school but as a kids most of us were keenly aware that we were just practicing “hiding in the kindling” (as the comedian Lewis Black describes it).