Is this the Scariest Clown of All Scary Clowns?

At least of all Scary Clowns riding tiny, tiny tricycles.

Just look at this guy!

He's the corpsiest clown ever. Even if you're not scared of clowns, you should be scared of this guy.

Barbara and the Iceman

Here's a novelty postcard I picked up in a small town in the Four Corners region of Colorado. It's from the Baxtone company of Amarillo, part of its Laff-O-Gram series of comical postcards. Like this example several of these were slightly risqué, but what appeals to me about this one is how Film Noir it feels.

 Barbara's relatively realistic, naturalistic depiction looks right out of a low-end romance comic, or a newspaper soap opera strip. Consider the raised hand, as though about to cover her mouth before she can tell hubby another lie, her sidelong glance, her back to her husband and the accusatory ice block:

 She looks like she's wondering how she can convince the amorous ice peddler to knock her old man off. And the poor cuckold of a husband seems to have been drawn by another hand entirely, a grotesque, cartoonish head awkwardly appended to a relatively realistic body:

I'd love to know who drew this.

Spooky Abandoned Farmhouse

Here's a spooky abandoned farmhouse Mrs. Phillips spotted on a two-lane highway outside of Modoc, IL:

I should have waited for Halloween but I haven't posted much of late.

Scandal!

In the late fifties, "Confidential" was the magazine that named the names and dished the dirt. I'd read a book about the magazine's tumultuous legal history (they got sued a lot) but I'd never seen a copy.

 That's Lana Turner on the bottom!

 Look! Edward R. Murrow had a missing tooth! And there's another one of Liz Taylor's husbands!

Queer Shenanigans! Reducing Pills! Louella Parsons! Man. Those were the days.

Slightly Naughty Stereo View

From 1897:

Oh, Stop! he says, but don't you believe him. This young temptress is determined to make the elderly bald gent yield his honor, and I believe he will!

That's all I got today.

Perversion for Profit

While looking for public domain educational and propaganda footage for the book trailer for the second Noir at the Bar anthology (coming soon!) I discovered this gem in the Internet Archive. It's from the Prelinger Archives, and it was produced circa 1965 by, among others, Charles Keating, later a United States senator ruined by the Keating Five scandal. Back then he was an anti-porn crusader (he's a character in Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt) and his Citizens for Decent Literature, Inc. made this sweet little picture. It's full of images of the smut it claims to vilify, and much of it is kinky stuff you'd have to have hunted pretty hard for in the sixties. The amzaingly great narrator is George Putnam, in a highly aroused state of high dudgeon.  (Click on the link, not the pic.)

You're welcome.
http://archive.org/details/0694_Perversion_for_Profit

Creepy Creepy Old West Waxwork Figures

 These used to be at the always fascinating Pink Elephant Antique Mall in Livingston, IL, where I have picked up many an interesting bit of Americana.
 
I think they came from a wax museum or Old West theme park that went out of business. They weren't in the best of shape by the time I took these pics.

I think this one's supposed to be Jesse or Frank James. His shirt needs washing, in either case.

 Those gloves are empty! Plus the left arm seems to have become disconnected from the shoulder, adding to the walking-dead vibe.

Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley are somewhat better preserved, at least from a few feet away.

Uh-oh--that buckskin's looking a little frayed. Let's get a better look at Miss Jane-- 

 Good lord! She has the eyebrows of a Yeti! Let's look a bit closer at Bill:

GAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhhHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Back away, hellspawn!

 That's better. A little better. Still he looks like a cadaver painted up by a frontier undertaker after a week in the hot sun.

 And this feller was the only one not for sale (see sign.) He's the only one not made of wax, and he has his own wheelchair!

 I suspect this is why he wasn't for sale: Look at his mouth. Peer inside. Yes, that's right--he talks!
I took these pictures a few years ago, and the other figures are gone--probably sold--

--but the Old Timer is still there at the Pink Elephant, greeting customers as they come in through the door. Pay him a visit if you're traveling I-55 through Illinois.

Alfred E. Neuman twelve feet tall!

These giants can be found around the nation, often holding a giant axe or a colossal tire. This one, however, is the only one I know of with Alfred E. Neuman's head, missing tooth miraculously restored!

 I took this at the intersection of 43rd and Cambridge in Kansas City around 1985. Does anyone know if this is still standing? The film was motion picture print stock (don't ask) which made it unusually hard to scan and correct. Note, please, the image of Alfred E. on the banner above the storefront!

This has been your obscure midwestern signage report. Next: Vintage erotica!

Good Taxidermy

Mrs. Phillips and I, on the way home from dropping our little one off at camp, stopped in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to see my elementary school pal Barry "Manolo" Sanders and his significant other Chantelle, and while there we went to the "Blind Pig" Brew Pub, wherein hangs this magnificent Gnu head.

ALL HAIL THE GNU!

Also, the Blind Pig makes some lovely beers.

I'm on the Road!

First I was sick. Then I was taking my daughter to camp and got busy, then last night the motel's wifi was broken. But I have a whole lot to blog now, having traveled all over the great states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana! I almost made it to Iowa, but that didn't work out and I will not be discussing it. Here, just as a teaser, are a couple of photos taken on Monday morning near Paw Paw, Michigan.

Do you love the musty, moldy ambience of a really cruddy, rundown flea market? The you need to make the trek to Paw Paw, because this place is huge, and every square meter of the place is imbued with a sense of hopelessness and loss.

Do you have dormant allergies that you yearn to awaken? Again, you must hasten to Paw Paw, because allergens unknown to medical science fill the air, swirling and dancing and awaiting the moment when they can once again overstimulate someone's immune system.

Are there LPs by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods or solo work by Donny Osmond that you're always closing in on but can't ever seem to get your hands on?

Paw Paw.
PAW PAW.
PAW PAW!

Dead Coyote

From the attic of an antique mall in Alton, Illinois, a rather sad-looking coyote.

He almost looks tame! I wish I'd taken a better close-up picture of him and his bedraggled lower jaw and broken ear.

 Now compare him with his fierce relation in some town I passed through in the Kansas Flint Hills sometime in the eighties:

 

Double Bonus! On the floor to the right is a coyote rug, and in the shadows of the upper right-hand corner, there's a bobcat. Bobcats are increasingly important to this blog.

I seem to recall I was passing through late on a Sunday afternoon and the whole town was shut down and spooky. I'd say this was the scariest sporting goods store in America.

ANGRY BOBCATS!

 He's ANGRY!

 He's in an antique mall in St. Charles, MO, if you want to take him home. And here's another one from a place not far from my house:

It's the same place that had the painting of Good Monk/Bad Monk! If you're looking for stuffed bobcats, I can help.

That Pesky Rat!

Here's a stereo card I found in St. Charles Missouri today for three dollars, the tragic story of a family tormented by a rat!

Click on it for its full-sized glory. And if you have a stereo-viewing apparatus such as a stereoscope or a lorgnette or if you have mastered the arcane art of "free-viewing," then you can see it in glorious three-D!

Encounters on the Road with Art

From an antique mall in Wichita:
I don't know what he's staring at but I'm glad it's not me. Next, a treasure from the same Michigan City IN antique mall where last year I failed to buy the sad clown painting:

It's a painting of John-John Kennedy, bravely saluting his Daddy's coffin as it rolls by! If you click to enlarge you'll see that the artist has affixed a copyright to the picture, which is funny since she copied it straight off of a copyrighted photo. Intellectual property lawyers, I can feel you salivating out there!

And speaking of JFK, here's a velvet rendering of the unholy chimera he spawned with Ronald Reagan, from Terre Haute IN:
And back to Michigan City, where the same stall (I think) that had the sad clown now features this charming landscape:
Just and ordinary picture of a sylvan view? Not so fast! A closer look reveals that this rocky place is haunted by transparent phantoms!
Amazingly, I didn't bring any of these home.

Back to blogging!

All right, summer's winding down. I haven't traveled very much, but I did make a couple of trips to Wichita and one, very brief, to Michigan and Indiana. Here's a trio of photos I found in an antique mall near Benton Harbor, MI (and not far from Niles, MI, home of 19th c. baby farmer and camp follower Mrs. Almira Griffiths!):





My guess is that these characters are meant to be a city slicker and a corn-fed rube, and that one is about to con the other out of a suitcase (not necessarily the one we think). The photographic studio is the Locke Clute company of 79 Washington Avenue in Detroit, and the stamp on the back of the photos identifies the artistes as Leo and Earl James, Singers and Character Change Artists (and get a load of the spooky Burlesque Shroud-of-Turin Effect bleeding through the back of the card):



Finally, here's one of the brothers solo, playing a drunkard:



All three images are marked on the back in pencil: One, "Earl Jake no. 1; "Earl Jake and" and finally just "Earl Jake." Someone who didn't like Leo, or was Leo's real name Jake? Was Jake their real last name? And whatever became of them?

NEXT: Adult novelties sold in gas station restroom vending machines!

The Will of Landru

Here's another picture I found in Wichita. Where is this, and what are these men doing? My first thought was that everyone was leaving church, but in that case where are the womenfolk? The seller suggested that it was a parade, but my impression is that it's mass hypnosis and they've been sent out on some sort of unspeakable 19th century mission by a local Svengali. They do bear a certain resemblance costume-wise to the people of Landru, don't they?