Once upon a time, starting in 1879, there lived a cartoonist named Walter Wellman. He was not a cartoonist yet when he was born, in 1879, that is to say. He probably wasn’t allowed access to ink until he was able to crawl around and grab it./ Anyhow, he was one of those cartoonistsContinue reading “Dr. Cupid”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Broad Humor
I wrote a whole book once of jokes singled out for their absolute omnipresence, what a layperson might call “old jokes”, or, if they were people were as old as the jokes, “chestnuts”. The book was presented in the form of a quiz: if the jokes were really all that stale, you would beContinue reading “Broad Humor”
Bygone Wishes II
Now in our last thrilling episode, we covered a forgotten postcard custom, that of sending postcards with pigs on them to wish someone a happy and prosperous new year. I regret that we only scratched the surface of the subject, as those pigs are legion, and could be found engaged in dozens of differentContinue reading “Bygone Wishes II”
Bygone Wishes
One of the things people do not talk about when studying serious history are the little pleasures and customs of life which have faded away. This is left to people who write mere nostalgia: a loving look back on such disappearing pleasures as the key you had to use to open canned meat orContinue reading “Bygone Wishes”
Swizzle or Swag
I was going to write about something completely different today, but I was transfixed by one of those momentous question which can change a country’s entire culture. You know the sort of thing: the little spur of the moment butterfly cough that can derail whole civilizations and send them spiralling toward doom or greatness.Continue reading “Swizzle or Swag”
The Yocks of Yesteryear
While I am waiting around for customers to make use of my new consulting firm, I would like to establish my claim to be an evaluator of old pop culture things. There must be plenty of people out there whose grandfather left them a stack of old books, or old newspaper clippings, or oldContinue reading “The Yocks of Yesteryear”
Fish Story
Seventy years ago this spring, general Douglas MacArthur made his famous address to Congress, in which he reminded everyone that “Old Soldiers never die. They just fade away.” Though he was not the first to express the thought (it apparently comes from a song parody of around World War I) he made it hisContinue reading “Fish Story”
Go Fourth
If I have scared away my readership with the previous blogs this week, I now have a nice private moment to do something I was fairly certain I would never do. There will thus be no witnesses, giving me plausible deniability if someone says “I saw you were reminiscing about the Fourth of July.”Continue reading “Go Fourth”
Such Is Life
“Mister Farmer! Mister Farmer! How is it that your cow there has no horns?” “Well, Ma’am, cows and their horns are an interesting subject. Sometimes a cow never grows horns at all. The scientists are still working on why: it may be the Good Lord just never meant that cow to have ‘em. Continue reading “Such Is Life”
Four Cheap Old Comic Books III
So It’s taken long enough to get here, and I warned you we won’t be studying the contents of any of them, but I just wanted to let you know what happened when I obtained, and actually read, these four Tijuana Bibles I found online. As a brief recap, and to bore youContinue reading “Four Cheap Old Comic Books III”
Blogsy Babbles 