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.

Manneken-Pis

These are two of a series of twenty slightly ribald postcards featuring the Manneken-Pis of Brussels, possibly the world's most disappointing tourist attraction. As the above cards show, it's a tiny statue of a little boy pissing into a fountain. No one really knows why it's there, though it's been suggested that it commemorates a kid putting out a fire in a similar manner. Anyway, since the early twentieth century these postcards have been on sale across the street. Mostly they feature older ladies--nuns, spinsters and unsatisfied wives--gazing longingly at the little bastard's junk.

Boring Postcard

With apologies to the brilliant Martin Parr, who has published several collections of Boring Postcards that are worth checking out. This is a view of Wichita's famed Mid-Continent Airport circa 1970-75. I will try and be more diligent in posting than I have been lately.