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.

Human Remains for Sale, Paris, 1985

I'll bet that headline is going to get me some interesting Google searches. This skeletal hand and its companion foot were on sale at a bookstall on the Left Bank of the Seine in that halcyon summer of 1985:

Sorry I've been backsliding this week! I've been busy scanning and cleaning up old negatives like this one. Tomorrow I head for Oxford, Mississippi to talk to my friend Jack Pendarvis's class about Wichita in the 1940s, thence to Atlanta, Georgia to record some video with my friend Lane Davies, thence to Columbia, Tennessee to see my cousin Lindsey Page and then to Nashville to visit Roy Acuff's Record Store! So believe you me I will have lots to blog about.

More Cake, More Lady

Here she is again, continuing her journey into erotic reverie, Jazz Age-style. Here's #10:

 She's lighting candles again, but without the wistful look! What do you suppose happened in #9, which is missing from my set? (I'm not quite sure if I ever had it.)

#11: Here she seems to have lapsed back into a pleasant state of sexy thoughtfulness, or thoughtful sexiness. Maybe she's thinking about Gilbert Roland, or maybe she's more of a William S. Hart kind of gal, or maybe she's dreaming of Lilian Gish's loving embrace.

 In #12 she just had an especially naughty thought.

 And in #13 she's looking right at you again, as though she just remembered she's being photographed.

 And finally, in #14, she gives in to temptation and uncovers her lovely bosom and slides her diaphonous garment  twixt her nether limbs!

And for some reason the breasts are covered again in #15, the last in the series. I wonder what ever happened to her.

The Lady and the Cake, Part 2

Here are more scans of the lovely lady, clad only in a diaphonous wisp of a garment, cavorting with a birthday cake. Scans 4 through eight follow!

Cycling through the spectrum of human emotions, here in #4 she's carefree!

In #5 she's thoughtful, lighting a candle and reflecting on something deep and wonderful--

#6 finds her having a happy thought, perhaps of a far-off loved one.

But in #7 she's reminded of something sad--though her right nipple seems to have perked up between shots.

And in #8 she's practically mournful. Sorry she's still dressed! For the next and last installment she will be partially disrobed, I promise.

Nudes in Nature: Arundel Holmes Nicholls

I got lucky today at an estate sale: a set of six old eight by ten black and white nudes.

They're by Arundel Holmes Nicholls, who was active from the teens through the thirties.

Good stuff!

A Scantily-Clad Beauty and a Birthday Cake in stereo, 1927

I posted one of these a while back and now I'm going to post the whole set, a few at a time. Just like a strip tease!

Which this kind of is.

She looks like she's really enjoying the lighting process! I wish I could get that enthusiastic about things.

Sorry these are a little out of focus. The cards are quite curved. She's still a pretty thing, though, and we'll be seeing a lot more of her later.

Oh Boy! Vintage Sleaze!

I picked this up on eBay a few years ago. It may or may not be the work of the same photographer who shot a whole box's worth of very similar stereo brothel views in France sometime around the 1930s. That box is somewhere in storage in the basement beneath my former office and I'm in the process of looking for it. In the meantime, here's a lovely lounging inhabitant of a long-gone maison close:

(Click to enlarge, seriously. And if you have some sort of stereo viewer, use it!)

A Bygone Pleasure Palace

 Near Rockford, Illinois (home of Jane, the world's most complete juvenile Tyrannosaurus skeleton!) stands this weatherbeaten sign, advertising what must once have been a splendid place to wine and dine and––I'm guessing––gamble.

Was gambling legal in Illinois back then, and was the name of the club a nod and a wink to the discriminating seeker of frolicsome entertainment? I don't know, but I wish it was still there. 

As heartwarming a blog post as I'll ever write.

Here's a beautifully lithographed poster advertising the serialization in Le Petit Journal of la Mascotte des Poilus, a 1916 novel by French pulp master Arnould Galopin. The book isn't much remembered--it's a sentimental thing about French soldiers ("poilus," or "hairies") adopting a little girl during WWI.

But it was adapted for the screen in 1918, and you can see the film in its entirety here: http://www.tracktvlinks.com/watch-la-mascotte-des-poilus-1918

The soldier on the right isn't very poilu, and in fact seems to be wearing a lot of eye makeup and lipstick, and I have been wondering whether or not this is meant to be a camp follower....(click to enlarge)


And check out the blood coming out of the dead Hun!

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.

Finally, the Weirdest Gift I Ever Received

Sorry for all the delays. I'd like to claim that I was busy but the fact is I've been too freaked out by the sinister vibes emitted by this anniversary gift from my wife to have much enthusiasm for taking the thing out of its box:



She told me I'd be creeped out by it. "I doubt it," I said. When I started unwrapping it, my first guess was that it was a piece of antique stereoscopic equipment. Then I thought: Welding goggles?



But no, the lens covers were perfectly opaque--metal painted black--and in any case the turrets held no glass. I was baffled, at least until my wife bade me read the card that came with it:



So that explains the sweat stains in the leather. How many men died wearing these, I wonder?

Cleveland

You'd think that with my unfortunate resemblance to Drew Carey (that guy is the bane of my fucking existence) I'd stay away from his hometown. But I can't. I love the town and its history, and I recently spent a very pleasant few days and nights there as a guest of Mark and Amy Stone and their delightful children, looking with Mark into a seventy-five year old cold case. Here are some of my new friends:

This is Flo Polillo, or rather a replica of her head in the Cleveland Police Museum. Actual head's whereabouts have been a subject of debate since 1935.

Above is s replica of Edward Andrassy's head. Actual head was found, but had been separated from Eddie's neck; said removal appeared to be the cause of his decease.

Here's Rose Wallace's plaster stand-in, modeled from a cast of her skull and based on photographs. Identification was tentative and based on dental work.

Finally, this is an actual death mask modeled from the head of a fellow known only as "The Tattooed Man." Can you think of a better name? Give it a try!

Here's Doc Stone himself, looking over Kingsbury Run, the flats associated with the murders. Mark directed the great documentary "The Fourteenth Victim" (available on Amazon), about the case. You should all order it and get creeped out good and solid.

And finally, my new friend Itchy. Itchy is resting in this picture.

Phil Lewis, 1925-2010

Last month my uncle Phil Lewis died, and the weekend of the 19th I went to LA for his memorial service and career retrospective, organized by his daughter, my cousin Janet. The above mixed media piece isn't typical of his work, but I wanted to include it on the blog because it's such a great picture of Phil.

The memorial service was everything it should have been, laughing and crying and the palpable sense that Phil was present among us. And in a very real sense he was--the artwork that was his lifeblood from the 1940s right up until the end hung on the walls of the gallery, and almost all the people still alive in his circle were there.

For all you 3D geeks

The above stereo pair was taken at Giverny in the mid-eighties. Below are a skeletal foot and hand I found on sale by a bouquiniste on the left bank in Paris in '85.