Robot Sex (It's our own fault, guys)

Looks like Robby the Robot is going to get lucky!  Cribbed from the blog Good Stuff is the frightening modern world coming when men will be replaced with robots. I'm not surprised to find women might consider replacing us with plug-ins. It's our own fault. 

Sounds from the AIR! The New Vintage Photography Book by Jim Linderman Available NOW

Vintage photographs of mystery, sound and science. In SOUNDS FROM THE AIR one will find pictures of the invisible. The presence of audible waves as captured by anonymous photographers. Mysterious and beautiful visions in sepia. The language of ether. Collected and curated, the pictures generate the buzz of static without making a noise. 78 pages. Available in paperback and instant PDF download. Jim Linderman has produced numerous art and photography books on the obscure.  ORDER HERE

Continental Hula Hips be GONE and the Hippy Hippy Shake America Discovers the Hula and Hips

There are two types of Hula dance. just like there is two types of American Indian art.  That would be Pre-Western world  and Post-Western world.

The Pre-Western world Hula was an integral tradition of a great cultural, spiritual and social significance.  (Again…just like Pre-Western Native American Indian art.) 

The Post-Western Hula is a way for American women to discover their hips. Or to look coy.  Or to ham it up for their hubby.  Or, now that I think of it…a way to be slightly offensive to a culture which spread from Tahiti to New Zealand, with hula hotspots in Hawaii, Somoa, Tonga and other locales.

The Post-Western world American Indian art was produced for sale, at slave wages, by people transitioned to reservations in need of a survival  income.

Okay…factual but unfortunate history lesson out of the way.  No, wait.   It gets worse.

When Protestant missionaries arrived in the Hawaiian islands, they immediately found the traditional dance obscene.  First step of learning the Hula?  BAN it.  By the time of our Civil War, the missionaries had managed to nearly stamp out the Hula on the islands, and believe it or not, LICENSED it so when it occurred in public, it was closely monitored.  

The missionaries didn't know about, or didn't believe in, or didn't enjoy women's hips.  Especially women's hips which were apparently enjoying themselves.  It is pretty hard not to smile when either watching or dancing the hula.  The hula was hot.  The hula was Shakira on a good day.

(According to Wiki, the missionaries allowed the dance to continue in their OWN little Christian hovels, but denied it to the natives.  That too is an old story. )

Am I being too harsh?  Nope.  The church has a history of banning hip-dances.  You want a little "Hippy, Hippy Shake?"  Well…okay.  But by those cute mop-top Beatles, not Chan Romero, the "ethnically outside" Spanish and Apache man who wrote it.  

The real, original, deeply rooted cultural dance known as the hula signifies nature, an ocean wave, a yearning, and a whole spectrum of deep, complex meanings… but the interlopers only saw the hips.  I am not sure if the cocoanut breast covering now seen at vacation resorts was part of the original dance, but I don't have to look it up.  I don't think so.      

Is there ANYTHING good to say about the history of the Hula?  Yes.  Hula Hoops.  The recent fitness craze.  The sound of the grass skirts  and the brief glimpses hinting at what is within.  And again…the smiles.

I collected these vintage photographs of American women doing the hula "ham it up" just to tell this story.  See how an image can be worth a thousand words?  So can a video.  Here is Chan rocking it.  Chan wasn't afraid of hips, but Ed Sulllivan was.  Look up Elvis.  He liked Hawaii too.



Maybe one day I'll tell the story of the slide guitar and what it meant in Hawaii.


Group of Vintage Snapshots of Hula, American Style.  All circa 1930 - 1945 Collection Jim Linderman

BROWSE AND ORDER BOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN HERE ON BLURB.COM  EBOOKS ARE ALL $5.99 EACH.  PAPERBACK AND HARDCOVERS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE, BUT AVAILABLE.

Comic Foreground Novelty Vintage Photographs ARGENTINA TINTAMARRESQUE The New Dull Tool Dim Bulb Book

Argentina Tintamarresque!  Comic Foreground Vintage Photographs.  You know the drill by now.  The newest Book from House of Dull Tool Dim Bulb, and it is only $5.99 in Ebook form, and $21.95 in paperback.  66 pages of fun! Cutout novelty screens were invented by the same guy who first painted dogs playing poker. That astounding fact may just be enough for you to purchase this, the most curious of books, but I will throw in a few more encouragements. One, all the photographs included in the book predate 1930, and two, all are from Argentina. Cassius Marcellus Coolidge is credited with creating "comic foregrounds" which put a sitter behind a caricatured painting. Staple of carnivals, "just off the exit" rest stops and anywhere one wants to have fun looking stupid. Argentina Tintamarresque, as odd as it may seem, collects tons of them.  Why?  Why NOT?

Most are real photo postcards, but there are snapshots.  Not only are the futuristic modes of transportation all wrong, the folks perched behind them seldom smile, as these are so old folks still thought you had to refrain from moving.  In glorious South American sepia, each a little gem.

Argentina Tintamarresque is OUT OF PRINT!  Current books available under the Dull Tool Dim Bulb imprint from Blurb are HERE

Announcing HOOFERS AND SWEETHEARTS : THE LITTLE WOMEN OF FRANK WENDT

Announcing Hoofers and Sweethearts : The Little Women of Frank Wendt.  The newest photography book by Jim Linderman from Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books.

Sideshow and circus freak photographer Frank Wendt had another line of work.  He made hundreds of cabinet card photographs of early vaudeville child actresses to be sold by the performers as souvenirs.  Collected for the first time, these turn-of-the-century photographs have never been shown together and come from the collection of Jim Linderman.  Young women "earners" from the tawdry and tainted early days of American show business when child labor laws did not apply.

Available in paperback OR as an Ebook download for only $5.99.  Preview and Purchase HERE

(COMPLETE LIST OF DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS AND EBOOKS HERE)

Vernacular Photography Linderman Style Vintage Photographs of Arcane Americana Book and ebook NOW AVAILABLE

Tooting my own horn here, my book of vernacular photography turned out really well, and since I hate to waste any new material on the blog during the holidays, I'll take the opportunity to shill baby shill.

VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ARCANE AMERICANA is 120 pages of the real thing. That is, far less than pristine found photographs of what Americans do best: be really, really strange with a camera near.
If you have even the most remote interest in things unusual, and don't mind being surprised every few pages, feel free to order it up. I've kept the price as low as I can.

Paperback is $28.95 and the Ebook is $5.99. Indicate which you like on the Blurb order form HERE. There is also a free preview of the book.

While I am on the subject, all my books from Blurb, I believe, have been converted to ebook format for the iPad and iPhone. $5.99 each. See full list HERE.
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Vintage Photographs of Arcane Americana by Jim Linderman and Blurb Books

A disparate group of demented images which share only one thing in common. All appear in the brand new Dull Tool Dim Bulb book (and Ebook for iPad) VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS of ARCANE AMERICANA:THE JIM LINDERMAN COLLECTION which is now available. Some 200 photographs which took ten years to collect and two nights to put together into a book!

Sorry typo fans...no text!

The download, in crisp digital format is only $5.99. The less sharp physical paperback book, 150 pages, is $28.95. If THAT isn't an argument for the death of the book, I don't know what is.


ORDER HERE TODAY! (Free Preview too) Once there, click at right to order.

All Photographs collection Jim Linderman

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Three original photographs in sleeves, circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman

Bernard Kobel Photograph Freak and Freak Photographer Tattoo Sideshow Abnormalities and More (Worse?)

I pride myself on collecting unusual photographs, but no one collected more and with more vigor than Bernard L. Kobel. It is a clear case of the freak collecting the freaks!

You see, Bernie didn't just take and COLLECT photographs of medical abnormalities, circus freaks, war atrocities, lurid and lewd crime scenes and such, he reprinted and SOLD them from the back of sleazy magazines! You have likely seen some if you are a bit adventurous...the woman with the world's largest whatevers, the guy with the giant stuff, the bizarre pair of thingamabobs...even I don't want to show them and I'm pretty much immune by now. I'm cheeky but Bernie crossed the line!

You have also seen reproductions of his collection without knowing it. The famous picture of armless and beautiful sideshow performer (and actress) Frances O'Connor who appears on the cover of the Re/search book Freaks (linked at right) is a Kobel photo, even if not taken by him, but he did take plenty himself. Some of the photographs shown on the billboard at Hubert's Museum in Times Square (and later, on the cover of the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street album) were Kobel shots. His reprints sold fairy well, at least well enough to have entered the sleazy underground where gourmands of gore dwell. They continue to sell long after Bernie moved from Indiana to Florida and then Sideshow heaven, as bootleg reproductions and, I guess, authentic ones on auction websites.

Not all Kobel's photos were gruesome or gratuitous, but plenty were...As you can see here, he advertised kinky tattoo photos in girlie magazines, (often showing far more than the tattoo) freaks and contortionists in entertainment trade magazines, and I suppose he advertised his gruesome war photos in whatever war folks read. A pair of originals are shown HERE.

I do not know much about Bernie, but I know as much as I want. Interestingly, a later advertisement shows he was trying to leverage his collection into a new direction....stamp collecting! "Lists sent, natch...Will trade for U.S. stamp collections."

Natch indeed...one of his catalogs from the 1950s lists nearly 500 photos which I don't even want to print the descriptions of. On the other hand, one of his photographs for sale in a catalog is "The First Official Hair Pulling Contest...held at the Palisades Amusement Park with 24 girls from the Walter Thornton Modeling Agency as contestants."

I'd trade a few stamps to see THAT one.

(A post on Vintage Sleaze the Daily Blog as well)

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE