Category: History

Because Salvador Dalí Was Wicked Peculiar

You’ve seen the mustache. You’ve seen the melting clock, the one that looks like a bad acid trip. The evidence is already there.

"They Made America"--Harold Evans
“They Made America”–Harold Evans

But this is another level of crazy. I don’t mean mental illness. Although, yes, perhaps that. I mean stranger than fiction. Here we see Dalí in a Johnny Depp bob, seated near his wife, Gala. Gala was already in an open marriage when she met Dalí, but decided to divorce her then-husband, poet Paul Eluard, yet continued to sleep with him while now married to Dalí. Yes, that makes sense.

Anyhoo, that’s a Hereford bull sprawled on the crumpled carpet of Mrs. Caresse Phelps Crosby, herself involved in an open marriage (and suicide pact, not to mention ample drug abuse and writing porn as a lark). Crosby, preparing for a ball one night, despised her corset and instead fashioned two handkerchiefs and ribbon into a bra with needle and thread. Of this she said, “I can’t say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”

Speaking for most American women, I couldn’t care less about a steamboat. But I thank you for the bras.

Just in case that surrealist scene isn’t odd enough, try to wrap your head around this. Per www.telegraph.co.uk, Dalí filled up a white Rolls Royce Phantom II with 500kg of cauliflower and drove it from Spain to Paris in December 1955. The reasoning was, he later told an audience of 2,000, that “everything ends up in the cauliflower!” He explained to American journalist Mike Wallace three years later that he was attracted to their “logarithmic curve.” Because that makes sense.

And listverse.com tells of a five-year-old Dalí pushing his friend off a bridge with no railing. Just for fun. Dalí is also noted as saying, “Hitler turned me on in the highest…His fat back, especially when I saw him appear in the uniform with the Sam Browne belt and shoulder straps that tightly held in his flesh, aroused in me a delicious gustatory thrill originating in the mouth and affording me a Wagnerian ecstasy.”

And if that doesn’t turn Dalí off to you forever, I don’t know what could. Enjoy your weekend.

Rain On The Von Lee

IndianaU73--018It’s hard to effectively capture an image of nighttime rainfall, but this pic from the ’73 Indiana University yearbook did a nice job. It’s the kind of shot that sets a mood and makes you want to write a short story.

Here’s the Von Lee on a frosty winter’s day.

pinterest
pinterest

And  check this one out, during heavy rainfall. I’d want to get my feet out of that oily water.

http://www.megcabot.com/2008/06/water-blog/
http://www.megcabot.com/2008/06/water-blog/

This one from http://www.brosher.com is priceless. Sunset practically explodes behind the Von Lee. Gorgeous.

The sun sets behind Bloomington's historic Von Lee building on Monday, July 13, 2015. Formerly a theater, the Von Lee now houses IU Communications on the second and third floors. (James Brosher/IU Communications)
The sun sets behind Bloomington’s historic Von Lee building on Monday, July 13, 2015. Formerly a theater, the Von Lee now houses IU Communications on the second and third floors. (James Brosher/IU Communications)

 

 

 

 

All Hail Mrs. Hale

LIFE: Our Finest Hour
LIFE: Our Finest Hour

Isn’t this a great image, so full of action and gratitude? Mrs. Hale, the wife of a British soldier, is shown offering troops tea and refreshments in front of her home, as a show of military support while her husband fought in France. After tea, if she was up to it, she was known to play a little accordion.

HalePinterest
pinterest

And sometimes, when you extend a kindness to others, they will pay it forward.

A technician 5th grade shares his meal with Italian children
A technician 5th grade shares his meal with Italian children

At The Corner Of Healthy And Happy 1951

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Before there were Walgreen’s on every corner (and I mean EVERY; there are FOUR Walgreen’s within a 10 minute drive of my home), there were Walgreen Agency Stores. Over the past decade, I have watched them pop up every couple of miles, wishing I had invested money in their stock way back when. Myself, I hit a Walgreen’s a couple times a week, whether for Loreal haircolor, dollar cans of Arizona green tea, a six-pack of Blue Moon, or a BOGO set of Russell Stover dark chocolates. Plus, that’s where our doctors send all the prescriptions that we never use because they’re worthless dung. But drugs aside, it’s way faster than the grocery store, and I don’t have to push a cart. Is there a Walgreen’s in your neck of the woods?

Pre-Redenbacher Old School Pop-Pop-Popping

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Arrowhead ’54

This method looks like it leaves a lot of room for error. Did any of you ever pop popcorn in the hearth this way? Did it taste better than microwave?

Brow Be Gone

Western Hills High School, Ft Worth, TX
Western Hills High School, Ft Worth, TX

In the late 1970s, the powers that be decided that foreheads were only useful as a canvas to showcase bangs, and forehead skin should be hidden altogether. By the fall of 1979, most hip teens had followed suit and were ready freddy for school picture day.

Even Caucasion afros came forward. Baby, you make my love come down.

Often, blond boys were indistinguishable from blond girls.

Then there’s this style, which would later morph into the “He wants you, too, Malachi” style from Children of the Corn.

Fashion’s dictates did not exclude any creed nor color. Rules is rules.

This girl missed the memo. She thought Marcia Brady was still groovy. By January, she was being homeschooled.

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Judge Reinhold got the memo, but he got it late. Bless his heart.

Catamount80033Covered foreheads made dudes look hot, like poor men’s Oak Ridge Boys. How did the ladies ever decide upon a suitor?

Coveted styles included The Future Domestic Violencer, The Camaro On Blocks, and The 7-11 Graveyard Shift.

But if the goal was to entirely cover the forehead, to the extent that one’s eyesight was in peril, then there could only be one victor. Steve Wagner, you were that man.

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But That Train Keeps A-Rollin’

from
from “Hometown USA”

Well-dressed workers flank a locomotive in the Illinois Central Railyard of Paducah, Kentucky, during the flood of 1913. I imagine the water was a tad unclean.

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