It’s 1970 and the TV moderator is railing against the boring look of uniforms worn by German soccer teams. Isn’t it about time these fashion-challenged jocks got hip?  Wouldn’t it make the games more exciting? We need color, we need sexier silhouettes, we need nylon and Spandex! And we need Brazilian music and dancing! Yes, yes, yes!
 

 
Here are three TV commercials that jumped on the hippie bandwagon in the Sixties. While condemning the counter-culture, mainstream media sure loved to use the energy and colors of psychedelia to sell, as demonstrated in these go-go crazy ads, clothing, sparkplugs and cameras.
 

 
Here’s a trippy/weird commercial for IHOP. Thanks to DM reader Wandering Mort for turning us on to this.

 
Flickr user Poletti pays homage to some of the most beautiful women from Star Trek. The Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek photostream features the female beauties with the name of the characters, what episodes they appeared in and their real-life names. Besides all the gorgeous faces, the intergalactic 60s fashion and make-up are added bonuses.

(via Super Punch)

 
This episode of Fault Lines just aired on Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2011. The view from outside the USA seems pretty clear and it isn’t something we should be proud of. Al Jazeera’s approach to the news puts our own media to shame - no hyperactive talking heads, no buzzwords and double-speak, no melodrama and hysteria This may be the only decent news source on the American airwaves. Ironic, isn’t it?

The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it’s been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

 
This is footage from French TV show Tous En Scene of Led Zeppelin performing at the Theatre Olympia in Paris on June 19, 1969.

Footage from this telecast has been available on Youtube in mostly low quality uploads for awhile now, but this clip is exceptionally nice. There’s a bit of rehearsal footage at the end.

Crank it up!
 

Before he struck mass market appeal as Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch proved his exceptional talents as Stephen Hawking in this classy BBC film from 2004. Written by Peter Moffatt, and directed by Philip Martin, Hawking tells the story of the scientist’s early years at university, examining his relationships, his work and the onset of the motor neurone disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Cumberbatch is wonderfully supported by John Sessions, Lisa Dillon and Peter Firth as a grumpy Sir Fred Hoyle, the renowned scientist and author of the classic sci-fi work The Black Cloud.
 

 
More Hawking, after the jump…
 

 
This is annoying: The BBC have decided to cancel one of its very best comedy series, Graham Duff’s brilliant Ideal starring the great Johnny Vegas as Mancunian pot dealer “Moz.” I’m a huge, huge fan of Vegas and Ideal, it’s one of the most-sharply written and acted comedies of the past decade. It’s got everything: Dope. Sex. Severed limbs… It’s also a rock snob’s delight with a terrifically curated soundtrack. Duff has actually used Throbbing Gristle’s music in the show and has even name-checked Carter-Tutti (aka Chris & Cosey) in a dog whistle meant for only a certain percentage of the viewing audience (I love stuff like that).

Here’s what I wrote about Ideal when I was guest-blogging at Boing Boing a few years ago:

One of my favorite British TV comedy series — and I’ll be blogging about several during my tenure here at Boing Boing — is a show about a Mancunian pot dealer called Ideal (geddit?). It’s consistently well-written, extremely well-acted and provides comic genius Johnny Vegas with a role worthy of his almost Shakespearean-level verbal talents.

Vegas, the funniest fat man since John Candy, is “Moz” a small-time weed merchant who may or may not be agoraphobic. But Ideal, which has so far aired for four seasons on BBC3 and is scheduled for a fifth beginning in early 2009, isn’t a comedy about drugs per se, it’s more about the dramatic device of Moz’s bohemian line of work bringing whimsical (and psychotic) characters in and out of his flat all day long. “Ideal” is truly one of the best things on television anywhere in the world right now and thanks to the wonders of technology, should you decide it’s something you would want to watch, there is surely a way for you to see it, too. Just get your hands on it, trust me, you’ll love it!

I have seen every episode and own the DVDs. My lovely wife Tara, who also has great taste in TV, forwarded this most depwessing and distwessing news from Graham Duff’s Facebook page. I’ve counted her saying “It really sucks that they cancelled Ideal!” about eight times in the past hour:

As some of you may have heard, the BBC have decided against commissioning an 8th series of Ideal. The reason given was that the new channel controller wanted to make a clean sweep.

It is a source of both pride and frustration that, at the point of cancellation, Ideal was attracting its biggest ever audiences, its highest profile guest stars and its best ever reviews. And the show is now being screened in more countries than ever before - from America to Finland and beyond.

I just want to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who has appeared in the show and worked behind the scenes over the last 7 years and 53 episodes. And a very special thanks to everyone who has supported the show and spread the word. We really wouldn’t have got this far without you.

It’s been a truly wonderful journey and to work with such a genuinely amazing team has been both an honour and a solid hoot.

Best wishes
Graham xxx

Not only is this sad, it’s stupid! What TV channel controller worth their salary makes the decision to yank a show that’s been on for seven years and has a growing international audience??? (Not a declining audience, an audience that is getting bigger worldwide every year—what gives?). How do you justify wanting a “clean sweep” over creating profits from a proven hit in a corporate environment, anyways?

WHO IS THIS PERSON WHO CANCELLED IDEAL?

And why do they still have a job?

Someone needs to organize a protest! Maybe mail this moron rolling papers care of the Beeb?

This sucks! It’s a travesty, I tell you! Let Graham Duff know how much you love Ideal at his Facebook page.
 

Painting by Alex Grey

Probably the single most perplexing element in the fossil record is the doubling of the brain-size of Homo Sapiens over the period of just two million years (a very, very short period of time in evolutionary terms). Something caused it, but what?

In this brilliant animation, comedian Duncan Trussell gets to the bottom of it. This is the greatest thing ever, an instant classic:

This is a part of Thunderbrain, the pilot I made for Comedy Central.  It is an animation of Terrance Mckenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory”  which is the theory that protohominids munched on mushrooms and this caused the mysterious rapid expansion of the neocortex that eventually differentiated us from the other monkeys.

Animation by Will Carsola. Written by: Duncan Trussell, Will Carsola, and Tom Giannis

I hope Comedy Central pick this pilot up! And if they don’t Adult Swim should snatch it up immediately. This is what I want to watch on television.
 

 
Terence McKenna on his “Stoned Ape Theory”
 

 
Joe Rogan on Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory”
 

 
Sonny Bono gets hardcore in this 1978 episode of The Love Boat.

The song is “Smash It’ and it ain’t bad.
 

 
Mick Stadium has uploaded another super rare clip to his Youtube channel: John Entwistle on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the first time it has appeared on the Interweb.

1973’s “Rigor Mortis Sets In” was John Entwistle’s third solo release. LP featured classic covers, new versions of Entwistle songs and then-new recordings.
LP was recorded in less than three weeks and cost only $14,000 to make (with nearly a third of the total cost spent on liquor.)

Sounds like a better-than-average Who song.