Let's Put the Tree...

....in front of me to disguise my weight gain.

The second image (below)--unusual in its documentary frankness for the time, ca. 1900.  The average diet of the period didn't exactly conduce toward obesity.  The junk food epidemic of the later 20th century is a historical aberration of some--ahem--magnitude. 

Elephant Tea Through the Ages

Not exactly in a postcolonialist critique mode.  (It's the 1930s.)  Art deco elements pronounced: we see the kind of visual world Jean de Brunhoff, the author of the Babar books worked in and out of....

A Mysterious Try-Out

...indeed.  A sororal scene?  Practicing a play?  I find this 100- year-old photo charming --what lustrous hair they all have--and the group composition worth study.

The poses seems theatrical enough.  Two young women are pointing index fingers self-consciously at a book- perusing pair on the left; two other girls, looking saucy, share a joke in the back.  The girl to the far left seems merry and decidedly engaged but also somehow emotionally disguised--a should-be-booted Puss-in-Boots/Rosalind type.

Hand-Colored and Proud of It

                                                                               

                                        

A quartet of anonymous photos in need of an airing.  Hand-coloring done with varying degrees of skill.  The last one looks as if a blue Magic Marker were used.

Isadora Ish

Je me lance vers la gloire.

Dempsey vs. Willard

Hello from 1919 and one of the fights of the century.

The underdog Dempsey's first heavyweight title bout, which he won with a combination of savagery, speed, and a devastating barrage of left hooks.  Willard, the reigning champion, was knocked down seven times in the first of three atrociously bloody rounds.  (A crowd of 70,000 people came to watch the fight and the storied Damon Runyon reported from ringside.  There's a frightful yet stupendous newsreel film showing the entire wild punchfest on the Boxing.com website-- http://www.boxing.com.) "The injuries that Willard sustained," writes one boxing historian, "were [...] comparable to those suffered by shell blast victims in the recent Great War. One of his cheekbones had caved in. His jaw was broken, as was his nose. Many of his teeth had been knocked out. His ribs were busted, his eyes were swollen shut and he had lost his hearing in one ear. His face and body bore multiple contusions, cuts and abrasions. His lips were badly cracked."  He was so badly mangled some observers thought that Dempsey had loaded up his gloves with plaster of Paris before the fight, a charge Dempsey vigorously denied.

Oddly enough, the illustrator responsible for this commemorative postcard seems to have mixed up the fighters: the boxer on the left--positioned here as if dominating the other--is in fact the 6' 6" Jess ("the Giant") Willard.  The ducking fellow on the right is the speedy, maniacally bobbing Dempsey. Nicknamed the "Manassa Mauler" after the fight, Dempsey here seems to sport an anachronistic hip-hop style haircut and looks very brown-skinned.  He was Irish and part Cherokee--from Colorado--and like Babe Ruth, an iconic American of the 1920s.

As Fran Lebowitz

.......once so memorably put it, "Which one's the trick?" 

Had a fun evening this week talking with David Halperin about his splendid new book, How To Be Gay.   These two fellahs might be able to offer a few surmises.

Getting Ready: August 1914 and 2014

Sewing Circle of Evil

Cheap made -in-Japan needle packaging--for the U.S. market-- from the 40s or 50s.  (It still has the needles in it.)  The Japanese artist seems to have been a bit unsure how to draw European-looking eyes and eyebrows--with the result that everybody here seems slightly Mephistophelian, especially the two gals in green.  Somewhat decadent, too: lezzie pose of the other pair.  Is anyone here really threading a needle?

Stripey Trunks

...and other mysteries.  1920s?  1930s?  Where?  Several of the reclining gents would appear to enjoy one another's company.  But what was the occasion?  And who's that in the turban?  (One of the outnumbered women in the picture?)  Why the two men in 3-piece suits?  Why are other people holding up long sticks?  Several men in bathing trunks look bronzed; others, peely-wally pale.  Again: why? why?

Naughty Docteur

From Your Best Friend Bobby

Forget Terry, I'm in Florida and I am now Bobby.

Malay Men

Looks like a fun gathering: tea, narghile (?), melon, something green and bisected under a cloth.  The infamous durian fruit?

Bébé Musique

We are the Kings of the Guitar

Home With Bells On

Back from NZ, which now seems like a blue sunny dream.  Paekakariki: Lesbian Capital of the Universe.  That's where I met this pair.   They've been together for 100 years.

Le Paradis perdu

So much better than Milton!  'You take me for a woman of the street'!

Cooking Instruction with Ginger

AKA Tina Louise, who poses here with two young contestants in some sort of television cooking contest.  The food looks scrumptious--like freeze-dried meals shipped straight from Gilligan's Island.

The redheaded Louise (b. 1934) seems to have been rather more serious-minded than one would have ever surmised at the time--i.e., when one sat glued in front of the TV with one's 4-year old sister in 1965.  Yes, Tina started out--with Jayne Mansfield--as a "product advocate" in the 1958 Frederick's of Hollywood catalog.  But she longed to be a serious actress and later said Gilligan's Island had ruined her career by causing her to be typecast forever after as post-nubile bimbo. 

In the glamorous AP publicity photo above, her culinary partners seem smitten enough.  Heavily lacquered locks are everywhere.   Below, a recent pic of Tina from Google images.

Working On My Abs

...as in absinthe.

A very rusty-grotty linen card from times gone by.  Looks as if negative itself got dipped in absinthe in the darkroom, rather than the approved chemicals.

The man, the white shoes, the red fire hydrant, the green doors and shutters: oddly syphilitic.