Dull Tool Dim Bulb The Newsletter 2013

 

Total hit count for the Dull Tool Dim Bulb series of blogs is now well over three million.  Go figure.  Read on...

 
First of all, a BIG thank you to Grand Rapids Magazine, May 2013 for a nice profile and several photos of what they called my virtual museum.  Pics here are tiny as the May 2013 issue is on the newsstand now…go buy it.   Grand Rapids Magazine is the model of a regional publication.  Grand Rapids, 30 miles from my beach town, recently made big news for their growing economy,  job opportunities and flood.  Grand Rapids, still the "Furniture City" in my mind is being rebranded as an art center as well with the nationally recognized Art Prize.  West Michigan rules!  (9 months out of the year.)

Other recent Dull Tool Dim Bulb press includes some international attention!   "Los calaberos las preferian negras" in El Pais (The largest Spanish daily newspaper with 13 million readers) and Pop Culture Miner in The Bund, a large circulation paper in China.  Iantique reprinted portions of the New York Times profile.  The Auction Exchange ran an article.  Book reviews abound…but most notable is the brief blurb from, of all places, Croatia (!) in the magazine Vox Feminae.  Open your Google translator and enjoy!     Monsters and Madonnas at the International Center of Photography Library ran a nice piece which mentioned Take Me to the Water.  Things Magazine linked to Dull Tool Dim Bulb recently and Blurb named Vintage Photographs of Arcane Americana "Book of the Week."   I've missed some here, but thanks ALL!

Craig Yoe in his new book The Creativity of Ditko credits my research and images considerably in helping to solve the question of who REALLY invented the character Spiderman…and it isn't who you may think.  A great story which defines friendship, hypocrisy and the relationship between art, commerce and comics.  Highly recommended.  I was pleased to contribute. 
Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books has several interesting new photography collections now available, minor little efforts but then all are only $5.99 if purchased in ebook form.  The pictures look better on a screen than the printed page now anyway, but they are also available in paperback and hardcover.   Without going into descriptions, trust ALL are unique books documenting highly unusual "things" and forgotten art forms...the hallmark
of Dull Tool Dim Bulb.  Each links here to the books on Blurb.com. 

The Cryptic Rebus Drawings of Anonymous: 19th Century Picture Word Games from the Collection of Jim Linderman

I'm with Dummy: Vent Figures and Blockheads  Vintage Photographs from the Jim Linderman Collection.

Private Photographs of a Burlesque Queen: Lynne O'Neill the Original Garter Girl  Original Photographs from the Jim Linderman Collection

Argentina Tintamarresque: Comic Foreground Novelty Photographs from Argentina
Next up will be True History of Tijuana Bibles: Facts and Myths which is taking a while as I actually have to write.  I'm far better at scanning photographs than I am at writing.  But it will look like the below, will likely be 150 pages and will tell the story of the little filthy comic books your grandfather knew well but wouldn't mention...with lots of previously unreported attempts of your tax dollars trying to stomp them out, and the wise-guys who printed them in their basements.

 

 Vintage Sleaze the Blog (which tells a true and usually very funny story untold story from the glory days of smut) continues a meteoric rise to the top of the blog world.  Vintage Sleaze now has well over 90,000 followers on Facebook (!) and to think I started it just to trick folks into looking at my REAL blog.    Pretty women and dirty men make for good reading…and believe me, as the stories have never been told, the research is hilarious.  The site tells a true story every day from the 1950's and 1960s, when soft-core sleaze was hounded by censors and the law.  The real life characters (models, photographers, illustrators, writers and mobsters) make for good reading, and that the public agrees is great.  Many of the stories (and much, much more) will be compiled into TIMES SQUARE SMUT to be available soon.   Risque and not quite Innocent fun now rendered harmless by the real smut of the internet!  The book centers on three sleazeballs who unwittingly changed culture: Leonard Burtman, Edward Mishkin and Irving Klaw, and several remarkable artists they employed, and the focus is on the graphics and artistic contributions (as well as their efforts to eliminate book censorship and promote intellectual freedom.)  The stories are outrageous.

Additionally, the blog within a blog CONTEMPORARY Vintage Sleaze, which profiles, with their cooperation, major artists working today who have been influenced by the smut of the past, is now up to 36 entries, and we have had the cooperation of an astounding group of notable artists.  Ryan Heshka, Tony Fitzpatrick, Jane Dickson, Hudson Marquez, and many more nationally known figures.  To date, only ONE artist has turned me down and I won't say who, but screw him.  I never liked his dealer either.

Stay tuned to Dull Tool Dim Bulb for upcoming projects and stay away from the other blogs.  I have all the attention I need, and if clicks were coins I would be rolling in fresh dough.  Or, as a hero of mine who passed away recently once said "farting through silk" but I will regret writing that as soon as I hit the "publish" button.

In addition to the above, other Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books are still in print (and in ebook) including Arcane Americana and Camera Club Girls: Bettie Page, Her Friends and the Work of Rudolph Rossi.