Junebug Takes A Smoking Break
Category: Art
In Silhouette
Strike Up The Band
Baylor University’s 1961 Round-Up is chock full of merry music. From the marching band to the spectators…
To the upright bass.
There was crooning.
And dancing.
And whatever the heck this thing is.
Sinners In The Mouth Of An Angry God
The stuff of nightmares. A workman wearing a newspaper hat and his pal chill at the steps of the Palazzo Zuccari, a 16th century building in Rome. It houses the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, a German research institute that isn’t even in Germany.
Evidently, newspaper hats were a thing. They would be great in central Texas because we have no wind and no rain, so they would never blow away. And if your phone ran out of juice, you could just grab your hat and read Garfield.
As you can see, the ghastly ghoul door remains nearly unchanged after 82 years, right down to the steps. With no visible door handle, I wonder how one enters.
Propel Her
Easy Speak
As you can see, illustrator Morgan was a master of movement, using his sketches to adeptly convey the energy and complexity of the speakeasy. Also called a blind pig or a blind tiger, a speakeasy was an illicit establishment that sold alcoholic beverages. I was today years old when I learned of the two blind terms. Now it makes sense that I went to a bar called The Blind Tiger in Shreveport 24 years ago, where I met comedian Mario Joyner, who invited my galpal and me to Harrah’s to gamble with him. But that’s another story for another time.
Contrary to the term, it was not a place where it was “easy to speak;” in fact, the opposite was true. It was a place that necessitated one speak easily or softly, as selling and consuming the bootleg booze was illegal. You can see the quiet conversations, imagine the hushed tones, of the clients, keeping it all on the downlow until sufficient intoxication raised their voices. That’s the power of the drink. We’ve all seen a gaggle of middle-aged women drinking margaritas at a Mexican restaurant. Speech is never soft.
From the last sip to a stolen kiss to gossip and entrances, Morgan was able to make the background just as engaging as the foreground.
When the comic was published, the country still had yet three years of Prohibition remaining.
But until then, speakeasies flourished. NYC claimed over 100,000 speakeasies alone. Saloons with player pianos and swinging doors made way for password-protected jazz-playing joints. Instead of aligning with the Prohibition moral compass, American women let loose with drinking, smoking, dancing, bobbing their hair, and donning shortened skirts. Make way the flapper. Gone were basic beer and liquor, as cocktails required mixers to make hootch drinkable. And once folks tasted sugary, fruity drinks, those who had never enjoyed beer and liquor found they enjoyed this new concoction. Organized crime soared. Cops couldn’t keep up with raiding and disposing. It was a losing battle. No wonder FDR repealed the 18th Amendment as soon as he was elected. The woman in the foreground clearly isn’t playing.
Things We Bought in ’28
And look! You could even get a FREE copy of the Declaration sent to you! No handling fee; just postage.
South By Super-Coach
Corkscrew Grip Tread
Little Red Mouse, Disney, and Fascist Pigs
That little red Fiat 500 was a first-year Model A (produced from 1936 to 1948), the smallest car in the world at the time. Italians (like those in this shot in Rome’s Mussolini Stadium) dubbed the midget coupe Topolino (“little mouse” in Italian).
Topolino was also the name of this very famous mouse. Yep, that’s their name for Mickey.
But evidently, cartoons didn’t set well with Fascists back when that photo was taken. Per theguardian.com, “Comics were seen as a vehicle for the values of the Anglo-Saxon democracies … and Mickey Mouse was the last of the American cartoon heroes to be banned because he was a particular favourite with Mussolini’s children; they were among the very few Italians who were able to defy their father with impunity.”
The controlling craziness went so far as to forbid use of “speech balloons” in any comics at all. Who knew the life of a Fascist cartoonist was so hard?
For your further edification, according to hellogiggles.com, Donald Duck goes by “Paolino Paperino” (not pepperoni), Daisy Duck by “Paperina,” and Goofy is “Pippo,” yet for some reason Pluto is still Pluto and Minnie still Minni (close enough).
Lively Ad Illustrations 1930s
Before craft beer, choices were limited. And Budweiser did its best to make it seem like Bud was the life of the party, replete with black tie formal and an orchestra. The movement conveyed in the dancing, the yellow glow around the conductor, the bubbles in the bottle, the lovely amber and skyscraper greys all made for a most tasty ad. Even the face of the lady in the right foreground seems to be aimed straight at you.
International Motor Trucks weren’t a party, but they were a part of history, as depicted in this colorful ad of a covered wagon, cattle, and pioneers.
The curves of the green vehicle pop against the sharp red lines in its truckbed. It makes my eyes happy.
This last 1931 image may seem mismatched. A sailfish selling ethyl gasoline? Well, it’s all about power. But to me, it’s all about movement. The splashing water, the open wings of the seagulls, the almost melting yellow sun behind it. That doesn’t even make any sense, but I like it.
Aren’t the colors fun?
Zoning Out
Three doctors–two young, one old–all engaged in a demo of “a new method of using penicillin” because learning never ends. And that class of ’06 meant 1906, of course.
And what we hadn’t learned by the fall of 1946 was that Camel’s catchy T-zone slogan was not exactly accurate. But even if we had known the dangers of tobacco, how successful would it have been to ask veterans fresh off WWII to quit their habit?
Not very.
My whole life, cigarettes have been bad for you, and the T-Zone meant the zone of oily skin on your face, the one in the shape of a T.
A skincare T zone is really only a couple inches higher than Camel’s. And both of them are uppercase T’s. Otherwise, they would have looked more like the crucifix zone.
In 2019, we’re more concerned with different zones, like being friendzoned or saving the ozone layer. Where I live, the weatherman is always warning us of Ozone Action Days.
Those are the days we shouldn’t go outside for more than a few minutes, and not without a hat and long sleeves and SPF 100. And try to limit it to early morning! That’s why neighbors mow at 8am now. That’s why the neighborhood pools sit vacant every summer, and you never see kids playing outside at all. They’ll melt in seconds. In fact, summer is the worst time of year in Austin, and yet Californians move here daily. That’s why every highway is in a construction zone. That’s the T-zone for Texas, where all the pollutants and congestion sits. It never ends.
But the more, the merrier, right? With over 100 folks moving here a day, year after year, decade after decade, there are new people to meet and greet. Now all that’s left is to decide on a buffer zone.
For now, let’s keep everyone in the audience.
I Don't Get It 