50 years ago yesterday the Corvette unveiled at GM Motorama

I have never been a big fan of Corvettes although I did own one, a 1967 427 convertible, but the cars have made an impact on car culture and hot rodding for a half a century.

On January 17, 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors' (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette, named for a fast type of naval warship, would eventually become an iconic American muscle car and remains in production today.

In the early 1950s, Harley Earl, the influential head designer for GM, then the world's largest automaker, became interested in developing a two-seat sports car. At the time, European automakers dominated the sports car market. Following the debut of the Corvette prototype at the Motorama show in January 1953, the first production Corvette was completed at a Flint, Michigan, plant on June 30, 1953. The car featured an all-fiberglass body, a white exterior and red interior, a relatively unremarkable 150-horsepower engine and a starting price tag of around $3,500 (not including taxes or an optional AM radio and heater). In an effort to give the Corvette an air of exclusivity, GM initially marketed the car to invitation-only VIP customers. This plan met with less-than-desirable results, as only a portion of the 300 Corvettes built that first year were sold. GM dropped the VIP policy the following year; however, Corvette sales continued to disappoint. In 1954, GM built around 3,600 of the 10,000 Corvettes it had planned, with almost a third of those cars remaining unsold by the start of 1955.

There was talk within GM of discontinuing the Corvette; however, GM rival Ford launched the sporty two-seat Thunderbird convertible in 1955 and the car quickly became a hit. GM didn't want to discontinue the Corvette and look like a failure next to its Big Three competitor, so the car remained in production and performance enhancements were made. That same year, a Belgian-born, Russian-raised designer named Zora Arkus-Duntov became head engineer for Corvette and put the car on a course that would transform it into a legend. Duntov had applied to work at GM after seeing the Corvette prototype at the 1953 Motorama show. According to The New York Times: "Once hired, he pushed through the decision to turn the Corvette into a high-performance sports car with a succession of more powerful engines. Chevrolet offered a 195-horsepower engine on the 1955 Corvette, a 240-horsepower engine on the 1956 Corvette and a 283-horsepower engine on the 1957 model." During the second half of the 1950s, Corvettes began setting speed records on the racing circuit. The car also got a publicity boost when it was featured on the TV show "Route 66," which launched in 1960 and followed the story of two young men (Martin Milner and George Maharis) driving around America in a Corvette, looking for adventure.

First Walkman Invented over 50 years ago

The secret history of the walkman revealed: Paul Johnson of Jacksonville, Fla invented this one-tube radio (powered by two dry cells) in 1957, to keep him entertained while he did yard-work. In terms of design aesthetics, I'm willing to say that this is the coolest, mad-scientist-looking-est headset ever to grace the head of a human.

If I would have known this I could have been delivering papers on my Schwinn Corvette while listening to Little Richard instead of trying to tune in KOMA in Oklahoma City (1520 on your dial) on my trusty Philco at bedtime.

Died --VHS 1979 -2008

The beloved videotape format that bravely won the war against Betamax and charmed millions of Americans by allowing them to enjoy mindless Hollywood entertainment without leaving their homes -- has died at the age of 29. It passed away peacefully after a long illness caused by chronic technological insignificance, snowy screens and a lack of director's commentary tracks.

No one knows exactly when this once-valued objet de home entertainment began its journey toward that previously-viewed-video bin in the sky. Some say it was March 1997, when the slimmer, sexier DVD was introduced to American consumers. Others pin the time of death to the week of June 15, 2003, when DVD rentals first topped those of VHS. And there are some -- technophobic, time-warped souls who argue that VHS isn't deceased at all. It's just, well, resting its eyes.

VHS was maddening. No matter how many times we tried to fast-forward to a certain scene -- the moment when Leonardo DiCaprio sinks underwater in "Titanic," or the fava beans line in "The Silence of the Lambs" -- it never stopped exactly where we wanted. Inevitably, by the time we hit "play," Leo was already dead and Anthony Hopkins was already saying a breathy "Chianti."
And even in this age of DVD saturation, when you imagine someone watching porn, immediately you think: VHS. And recall that black-curtained corner of the video store that was marked "18 and Over Only," with its nervous-looking browsers.

History adds come clarity to new crises

Yesterday morning after the big stock drop on Bloody Monday, as some experts were calling this week’s Wall Street woes, I listened to a radio commentator report in a gloomy tone that the Tuesday market was opening with the Dow Jones under 11,000 points for the first time in two months.

Yes, two months.

Not 27 months or six years or 34 years or for the first time since 1932. The Dow Jones was opening at its lowest point in TWO MONTHS.

How are we ever going to adjust to that calamity?

Yes, the U.S. economy is in trouble. People are hurting, compared to how they were living a couple of years ago. Jobs are being cut, the dollar isn’t buying as much, the body politic seems frozen by indecision and partisan gridlock. So how bad is it, really?

Unemployment is running at about 6 percent, maybe a tenth of a point or two higher. Not good, but not bad as a “crisis” goes. The housing market is in the tank, but that’s only compared to the boom of recent years when “starter” homes couldn’t be built fast enough to sell at $250,000.

Even with gasoline hovering at $4 a gallon in most markets this summer, the decrease in national mileage traveled was down only about 5 percent - hardly a sign of desperate times. Prices of food and other goods was increasing at about the same rate as the cost of energy, but the grocery shelves were amply stocked with fresh produce and popular restaurants still had waiting lines at their doors.

Now every home has at least one computer, three flat-screen TV sets and an inventory of iPods and other electronic gadgets to equip a squadron.

Our idea of hardship these days is having to cancel the premium service on our satellite TV programming.

As a friend of mine said recently, things are so bad that the nation’s war on poverty has become a war on obesity.

Yeah, things are tough. But compared to most of the world, we’re not even hurting yet. We’re more comfortable than any society in human history, we enjoy more freedom than any nation on the planet, we’re a people still full of innovation, our resources are bountiful and our homes are secure.

The only reason we think we’ve got it so bad is because we’ve had it so good.

Even after the devastating hit to our economy when terrorists struck the World Trade Center towers seven years ago, we fought back to all-time highs as measured by nearly every economic indicator. After what at the time seemed like a crippling blow to the nation’s knees, the nation was back on a roll in five short years.

By any standard, life is good. Our drinking water has never been cleaner, our cities’ skies have never been clearer, our lives have never been longer, our comforts have never been greater and our assets have never been more abundant.

Maybe some hard times would do us good.

I had the humbling experience this week of listening to a man recall the true hardships and human suffering of his parents, refugees in Europe at the end of World War II. They were among the millions of people who had been uprooted from their homelands during the war, wandering in fright as their fate was determined by forces well beyond their control.

Their families had been torn apart, their lives left tattered, their possessions contained in a single bag, their futures bleak, or worse.

Even as peace was declared and celebrated, they were among the millions of desperate people who were seemingly lost souls haunted by overwhelming hopelessness.

They knew true hardship, and their stories dumbfounded everyone in the room who listened.

Yes, today’s global economy is experiencing a few pains, and many of our family budgets are feeling a pinch. But a good dose of history can quickly put things in proper perspective.

Certainly there are causes for worry, and we can find grounds for concern.

After all, this week things are worse than they’ve been in TWO WHOLE MONTHS.

Hey, Where Did All My Stuff Go?

By Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Well this sucks. I leave the realm of the living to roam the underworld for a few thousand years, return to my burial place to enjoy all my worldly possessions, and all of a sudden, everything is gone. Everything. The alabaster chalice, the cobra amulet, that gold vulture thing I've had since I was a baby—all of it, gone.

I don't understand how this could have happened. It was all right here. Everything I ever owned. Right f#%$ing here. I definitely remember there was a royal scepter leaning up against the outer sarcophagus, and there were a bunch of crowns and stuff, too. I know I had at least, like, 10 crowns. And—aw, f#*k me, they took my pendant with the beetle and monkeys on it. I f#$%ing loved that pendant. It's not even worth anything, but it was still like my favorite thing. Why in the world would someone do something like this?

This afterlife is going to suck.

And where did my statue of Anubis go? Do you know how hard it's going to be to find another three-foot-long wood carving of a recumbent jackal? It's going to be impossible, that's how hard it's going to be, because it was carved for me by my grandmother Queen Nefertiti, who last I checked died in 1330 B.C. I was going to use that statue. I was going to use all of this stuff.

Now what am I supposed to do? All my shit, the necklaces, that weird lion vase, the gold f#$%ing daggers that I couldn't f#$%ing wait to use, gone. I have nothing to wear. I have nothing to do. I guess I'll just lie here on the floor for the rest of eternity.

Oh, but I see my wooden chest is still here. Too bad everything that was inside of it is gone. But thank goodness I still have my precious wooden chest. What would I ever do without my painted wooden chest with nothing inside of it? I see my bronze trumpet and golden throne are missing, though. Shocking. That's okay, I'll just entertain myself for the rest of time with this empty wooden chest. Who needs jewels and treasures anyway? No, this is much better. F#$%ing shit bastards I hate this!

I guess I should describe some of the stuff that's missing, in case anyone has seen it. It's pretty hard to miss. Pretty much everything is covered in gold. There was this bracelet I remember, which had an eye painted on it. There were these five gold rings, which I guess looked like regular gold rings, basically. I'm also missing this cool-looking statue that was like a snake with wings, but its head was a human head. And a whole bunch of other shit, too. So basically anything gold with animals and stuff is probably mine. And again, that pendant I mentioned earlier. It had a beetle on it with two monkeys, and they were holding hands or something, and they had moons and suns over their heads, and the beetle if I remember correctly was blue. F#$k, I really want that pendant back.

If anyone reading this has seen any of the stuff described above, please return it to my tomb, located in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, immediately. Please, I seriously need this stuff back. Thank you.

Pharaoh Tutankhamun is an Egyptian king who ruled from 1333–1324 B.C. He can be reached at tutank1341@gmail.com.