Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Humorama Humor New Book on Old Gags Humorama by Alex Chun

Alex Chun has a new volume available from Fantagraphics Books in his series which profiles the "few dollars a drawing" gag writers who sold work to the Humorama line of digest publications during the 1950s and into the early 1970s. As I have been writing on the lesser known artists who contributed, with the scant information available...I eagerly await the book!

I also collect the original drawings, and a good share of them have been posted on my blogs over the last few years...great stuff, and neglected ever since the women's movement made them even more offensive than we thought they were.

For those of you who do not know the Humorama books, which literally filled the racks when I was growing up, here is a sample of my favorite "issues" (as if one was any different from the other.) You will note the colors on the covers I pick are similar to those used on traffic lights. No coincidence. They were intended to stand out (make you stop, look both ways and carefully proceed to the checkout.)

I try to sniff out, dig up and write about one dead Humorama artist a month on VINTAGE SLEAZE . Some of those articles have also been collected on HUMORAMA ART. Feel free to browse and share.

Collection of various Humorama Publications circa 1957-1965 Collection Victor Minx

Buy the Alex Chun Book Below from Fantagraphics or your favorite seller. Mine is on order!

UPDATE: MY REVIEW OF THE BOOK IS HERE on VINTAGE SLEAZE the BLOG

DULL TOOL DIM BULB / VINTAGE SLEAZE BOOKS HERE

Fotofun Game of Vernacular Photography 1934 Collection Jim Linderman

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Pre-Adobe! Laugh Your Heads Off! As found, with period heads cut from photographs (vintage, I didn't do it) with the same folks appearing on several pages. There was also a Fotofun postcard book with the same technique published around the same time. Created by William J. Glassmacher for Treasure Chest Publications.

Fotofun Book Treasure Chest Publications 1934 with cut and applied photographs.
Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books Available HERE

Check Your Hose Day! A Good Hose is a Household Necessity (Hose Humor collection Jim Linderman)

Yes, once again it is "Hose Inspection Day" so let's get to it. A good hose is a household necessity. I check mine even more frequently than necessary just to be sure.

Pair of Harley R. Lugibihl "Look Over Your Garden Hose" advertising cards circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

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Merchants of Death Camel Cigarette Pushers circa 1935 Vernacular Photographs Collection Jim Linderman

Spreading black death with every stop, a slimy pair of smoke addicted mugs travel the country sharing their misery with others. They don't use gangsters anymore (well, not gangsters, but certainly the kind of traveling salesman one would hide their daughter from.) Now they use sophisticated "advertising agencies" to trick the young. I have always thought pushing tobacco was the lowest morally an individual can sink. It was true then, it is true now. Committing slow murder with every stop.

Set of Original Snapshots, circa 1935 "Traveling Tobacco Salesmen" Collection of Jim Linderman

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOK CATALOG HERE

Survivor Real Photo Postcard Collection Jim Linderman

Real Photo Postcard circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman

Know Your Pornographer Stag Film Projectionist 1953 Mug Shot

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"Settle down fellas...we'll get this show going as soon as Bobby gets it rolling."

Stag Film Projectionist Mug Shot 1953 Collection Jim Linderman

SEE ALSO SMUT BY MAIL: Vintage Graphics from the Golden Age of Obscenity by Jim Linderman\

Stay on the Safe Side with Jerry McSafety, Dummy.

Another blockhead, this one with a job.

Blockheads! Folk Art Dummys

Anonymous Photograph circa 1935? Collection Jim Linderman

American Primitive

TRESPASSER FIGURAL SIGN

DRIVE IN SPEAKER HEAD

RAYGUN CHECKERBOARD

IRON DOG DOOR STOP

LADY AND THE CAT

When it is predicted to reach 100 degrees in New York City, one of the best things to do is to visit the cool space of Aarne Anton's American Primitive Gallery. I never waited for the elevator...it was just a flight up, and the door always opened to a curious world. Aarne has the goods to prove his good eye. Folk Art collector Herbert Hemphill jr. once told me it took a more sophisticated collector to see in the round (meaning 3-Dimensional and sculptural.) I don't know if sophisticated is the right word, but certainly things you can see from many angles are often more fun than a painting on the wall. Just a small sample of the sculptural things available.

Click each title for description. Aarne posts six new items a week on Tuesday or Thursday, and there are literally over 100 objects to see on his site.

Things to Make Dandelion Wine

Seems simple enough. On Reverse Elderblossom Wine

Handwritten recipe card, no date

Frank Wendt ONE MAN BAND

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I gave my Frank Wendt photographs to the International Center of Photography in NYC for a forthcoming show, but found a scan I made of an anonymous one man band he photographed. Wendt was an understudy of circus freak photographer Chas. Eisenmann who took over his studio and worked in the Bronx and later New Jersey.

Cabinet Card by Frank Wendt Untitled "One Man Band" circa 1890? collection International Center of Photography

HOW HOT IS IT? Hot Enough to Irradiate a Model's EGGS

Cooked to Perfection by Convection! A lovely Florida model sits on an induction coil apparatus in order to demonstrate skillet heat waves.

Original Press Photograph 1939 Collection Jim Linderman

Startling Detective Work for Genealogists! A Genius Tool from Patterson Smith

A group of Startling Detective Magazines I keep in a library periodical box behind me, just like in a real library! No, I do not keep them in date order. So that these were all published in the 1950s by Fawcett publications, a company founded by Wiliford "Captain Billy" Fawcett in 1919 is a good story, but I wanted a better one. So I fished around.

My definition of genius is putting something old to a new use. Patterson Smith qualifies. Why? He uses his enormous database of True Crime magazines to help family members, genealogists and collectors find grisly tidbits from the tons of pulp produced from the 1930s to the 1990s. Now personally, If I were doing some family research I would selectively NOT include this source. Some of the goobers in these tales don't belong in any family, certainly not mine. But there you go. An enormous resource, as just one issue here includes 14 lengthy stories, all true, and each has dozens of names, though I am going to guess Mr. Smith doesn't index the names with an asterisk. You know...the names changed to protect the innocent. Check THIS out.

Group of Startling Detective Magazines, 1956-1957 Collection Jim Linderman
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Tin Folk Art Weathervane Airplane collection Jim Linderman

Wood and Metal circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
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The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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