Magic Lantern Glass Slide: I Want To Sing Along!

This old glass movie slide was probably used in an old movie theatre at intermission or before the show started — when people would sing along with songs together rather than just collectively ignore the ads.

This antique glass slide by Maurice Workstel of New York is from a series called Song-Hit Slides and the lyrics [...]

Shopping For Awesome Toys In Retro Sexploitation Flick

Over at French blog Au carrefour étrange, a review of Joseph W. Sarno’s Flesh and Lace (1965).

Since the site is in French, you may be confused — but it’s apparently exactly how it looks: A film that starts at a strip club and ends up at a toy store, with a woman seduced by a [...]

Dogs, Cats, Mr. Right, And Other Companion Animals

When making a list of qualities you are looking for in a mate, don’t overlook some of the basic fundamentals of companionship you’ve enjoyed in relationships with pets.
Forget about those jokes (and the sometimes realities) of people looking like their pets. Forget about Dominatrixes (and Cosmo articles) which tell you to treat your mate like [...]

Of Brown Marie, Yellow Marie, And Pickaninny (Or, Of Racism In The Toy Wife)

I don’t think I can let Black History Month go by without mentioning 1938’s The Toy Wife.
Primarily the movie is the story of Frou Frou (played by Luise Rainer), a woman found to be so guilty of a frivolous nature, so childlike in her approach to life, that she must suffer the wrath of The [...]

We Had Joy, We Had Fun, We had Seasons In The Sun…

I’ve been listening a lot to the cable music stations — most recently to the 70’s station. Tonight, Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks came on and I found myself singing along as I had in my childhood:
We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun
‘Til the cops came along [...]

Cheap Thrills Thursday: Of Storks In My Collection & Contraception

A few months ago, a gentleman contacted me about one of the items in my “vintage stork” collection. The antique postcard, postmarked 1908, depicts a couple shoo-ing away a baby-delivering stork; the gentleman was James M. Edmonson, Ph.D., Chief Curator of the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum at the Case Western Reserve University; [...]

He’s Got Wingmen; She’s Got Cock-Blockers

Also in the October issue of Psychology Today, a piece about cooperation in courtship by Matthew Hutson titled I’ve Got Wings. The piece, complete with diagrams for play like a football coach would use, may have been so titled to play upon the old wingman dealio; but that’s only half the story as the [...]

Cheap Thrills Thursday: Throwing Out Body Issues

They say you can tell a lot about a culture by their garbage — “they” being anthropologists, social scientists, & historians (their amateur varieties too), folks who monitor consumerism, as well environmentalists & “green” eco types. And dumpster-diving garbage pickers like me & my family.
Yes, I dumpster dive and “rescue” things found curb-side — [...]

Just Who Destroys Books & Libraries?

After reading So Many Books: Reading & Publishing in an Age of Abundance, I was delighted to serendipitously discover a copy of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq, by Fernando Baez (translated by Alfred MacAdam), staring me in the face from the “new arrivals” display at the [...]

Why We Vilify Single Moms

When I was in college I was a single parent. Finding myself struggling personally with the demands of continuing education and single parenting (a special needs child too yet) was challenging enough; but this was at the time that Tommy Thompson was governor & he made bashing single moms & welfare a public sport. [...]

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