Randomness

So, I know I have left my readers out in the cold for several months. I feel terrible about it. I've been super busy lately, putting together 2 art shows and doing a bit of traveling. Also, I was without a camera for a good chunk of time...but enough of my excuses...let's jump in it!

I honestly don't remember where I got these bobble head tigers. Maybe I'm getting Alzheimer's early. They were at one of the local antique stores a few months ago, I think, but I don't remember which one.



Melanie and I stopped in a nifty antique shop in Memphis while we were in town for Gonerfest, and she picked up this little purse with winking eyes. She has a couple similar coin purses that I'm sure were made by the same company, but I keep forgetting to take pictures of them when I see 'em...damn Alzheimer's.




Flip it over, and it's a guy. Tranny purse.



When we got home from Memphis, we were greeted by a new floor in the bakery.



My mom got me this cat for x-mas as a stocking stuffer. She doesn't know I know she got it at the local Salvation Army for $1. I think there's a matching dog around here somewhere...A bunch of my stuff's in boxes.



This Flip Wilson talking doll was my X-mas gift to myself. At $5, I couldn't pass it up...



...especially considering that when you flip Flip over, he becomes Geraldine, and hangs out with tranny purse.



This is Gaylord...he was made in 1962 by Ideal, and I found this one still with it's bone! My parents wouldn't let me have a dog when I was a kid, and I suspect that if I was a kid in 1962, they would have gotten me this instead and told me it's just as good as a real dog. That's what this toy was...something to shut your kids up when they beg for a dog...No wonder Gaylord's time in toy stores was short. The name probably doesn't help much.





These garage rocker dolls were in the same Memphis antique store as the tranny purse. I think they look like my friend Jules. I don't know where or when they were made, but they are pretty cool regardless.



I gave Melanie this poodle for Christmas, and it turned out that she had almost bought it for me. That happens every year. We got each other Charles Phoenix books, and my mom and Melanie both got me the "Cartoon Modern" book about mid-century modern animation.

I must've had tacos the day I took this picture, hence the Mexican Pepsi bottle lurking in the background.



This awesome sad eye cat picture was an x-mas gift from my mom.



Melanie got me another piece for my big/sad eye collection for Christmas...



...as well as her big sister. I dig the big eye/pin-up crossover! I also dig my bathroom's wallpaper!



Well, hopefully it won't be such a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE gap between updates next time.

Amish Paradise...a Hoarder Of Awesome afternoon roadtrip

Shipshewana, Indiana is a strange place. It's a tiny little town near the Michigan/Indiana border. It's a famous tourist destination because of it's dense Amish/Mennonite population. I find it a pretty eerie place. I guess you'll have that with an ultra-religious town populated by nobody but Amish and cranky old Republicans(not to get too political on y'all), full of tourist attractions for the 70-plus crowd, but with a big stinky loud livestock feed mill smack in middle of everything, making the whole town dusty and smell like vaguely like dog chow. If you've ever seen the Documentary "Devil's Playground", it was filmed here and in neighboring LaGrange. Anyway, besides being a strange place to visit, it's also got some top notch antiques. Not the cheapest place to pick up goodies, but since the average antique shopper in the area is 300 years old, it seems that the cooler things are amongst the cheapest...and that, along with their fantastic candy store, keeps me coming back relatively regularly.

On the way there, yesterday, I planned on taking pictures of some of the sights, but somehow I missed the junkyard with the VW Beetle wall, and this REALLY cool California style, Eichler-ish atomic ranch house, and we took a different way back, so I didn't get a second chance on the way home...oh well, next time. I did get one cool photo from the car. This Depression-era gas station-turned tire shop still has the original porcelain Mobil oil Pegasus sign. I can't believe nobody's stolen it/offered so much money they caved and sold it. It's one of those things that I really want, that I'll never afford...like one of those huge fiberglass Big Boy mascots.



We were in a hurry on the way to Shipshewana, since everything closes at like 5pm(thanks a lot, old people), and I generally wake up at 2...and it's almost an hour drive. Not a big window for antiquing. We were in such a hurry, we flew past this big old ex-auto repair shop-turned storage building with a bunch of knick knacks in the window, and a garage sale sign, between LaGrange and Shipshewana. About a mile down the road we decided we'd better turn around and check it out. Good thing! The place was PACKED with old junk. We bought a ton of stuff, and everything was $1 a piece. I think it's because the old guy there liked us. He joked around with us for a while and even showed me the 1953 Studebaker hot rod he was building in the back. We left with armloads of nifty stuff...some of which I'm saving for later posts. One cool thing I got(actually, these were 50 cents for all of 'em, not $1), were these business cards from the Merry Mouse Stage Bar in Cleveland, Ohio. I looked up the addresses on the card on Google maps, and it looks like both buildings are long gone. I wonder if that's thee Cliff Edwards, the vaudevillian jazz singer, who voiced Jimminy Cricket. since he was on the club circuit in the 40's and 50's, I have reason to believe it is.



I looked around a little on the internet for formation on the Merry Mouse, and this is all I found...an ad from the Cleveland Press, 1948. One thing is for certain, and that is the swankiness of the club.



This patch was in the same box with the cards...I think I got this one for free. I don't have much else to say about it, other than it's neat.



This strange donkey ash tray is one of my favorite finds in the barn. readers of the ever phenomenal Gonked, Glooked, and Slurped blog are probably familiar with the worry bird cousin of this guy...

seen here.

...no doubt from the same manufacturer(T.C. USA?). This guy seems to be WAY more enthusiastic about receiving a hot load of ash in his ass, than the bird does.



Here's the other side. It reminds me a little of Jack Davis' Marx "Nutty Mads" figurines from the 60's.



This plastic-painted-to-look-like-wood poodle is from Hong Kong. I don't know who the manufacturer is, because that part of the tag is damaged, but I don't think that would help. Looking on Ebay, I found a few of these, and they all seem to say different things on the bottom. At least 3 different companies were importing these from Hong Kong in, I'm guessing, the early 60's, all with their own tags. I have a matching dinosaur one, and they made a squirrel too...probably other animals as well.



We made it to Shipshewana with time to spare, but we were pretty spent from playing "American Pickers" in that barn, so we ended up not buying anything at the antique mall. We did, however, get enough candy at the candy shoppe to give us both diabetes 7 times over.

We headed home taking an alternate route, so I could hit the usually fantastic Goodwill in Sturgis, MI. Glad I did, because I scored these fantastic trashy shellacked wood Elvis masterpieces! I also got a really clean 7" of Shaun Cassidy's "That's Rock 'n' Roll"...Ha!



On the way home, we drove past this old folks home that always has 5 or 6 people sitting outside in Eames arm shell chairs. I always hope they'll be on the side of the road with a 'free' sign. The chairs, not the old people.

When I Say I'm In Love, You Best Believe I'm In Love..L.U.V!

Ah, Saint Valentine's Day...a fake holiday invented by card companies...and candy companies..and flavored lube companies. I'm not a huge fan, really. I prefer Christmas and Halloween and My Birthday. Hell, I prefer Thanksgiving, The 4th of July, New Years, City-wide junk pickup day, and Hollywood Week on American Idol. My girlfriend always ends up working On Valentine's day, and everyone else is either out being romantic with their significant other, or complaining excessively about being alone. I used to look forward to the History Channel's 2 hour St. V-day Massacre special, narrated by Paul Sorvino, but I never came across it this year, which is too bad. Anyway, this year wasn't too bad, even though Melanie was working. She got me a big bag of Kit Kat bars and took me record shopping the next day, so now I've finally heard the new King Khan and BBQ record. Plus I found a long outta print Zodiac Killers record I didn't have, so Happy Valentine's day to me! Anyway, enough rambling...

A few years ago, my old band was playing a house show in Grand Rapids. I wish I would have taken pictures of the place. The Kid that owned it had inherited it from his grandparents, who designed and built the killer ranch house in 1956. It looked straight from the pages of Atomic Ranch. Really an amazing place to explore, since most of the guy's grandfolks' stuff was still there. He knew I was into neat old junk and asked if I would be interested in some old Valentine's and X-mas cards. Turns out, his grandma and great grandma, and maybe even great great grandma were all elementary school teachers. He ended up giving me 2 large Hefty bags full of old valentine's cards, the earliest dated one being from 1901, the newest being sometime in the late 70's. Condition ranged from half mouse eaten, to looked like it was made yesterday and still sealed in the original envelope. I (poorly) scanned some of the best ones.

These ones are all from the early 1900s, mostly made in Germany.



The girl with the bowl of cherries has a tab on the back that makes her arms move, to look like she's woofing down the cherries. The other girl has a tab on the back that moves her eyes, and used to turn the pages of the book she's holding. The Fatty Arbuckle-looking kid is cool, but I added the other creepy kid as space filler.



Nothing says 'Be my valentine' quite like some good ol' American racism. the black girl's arm moves, and on the back, somebody wrote "Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, Merry X-mas. Happy 4th of July. Nuts To You Nancy. XXX".



move the heart on the side of the card, and the boy moves his arm, I don't know if it was intended to be as dirty as it seems, but I have a suspicion that the guys at the card company had a few giggles over this one. I'm not sure what it says at the bottom, as it's missing a chunk, but I imagine it's something filthy! The cowboy and Indian engage in some light bondage, while the pervo bear has a message for you in his sweaty jacket.



These two cards fold out as shown. Pretty cool pre-WWII cartoon art.



The chalkboard girl's arm spins, and the chalkboard says all sorts of generic lovey stuff. Pull the bottom Dog's ear to move his eye and tail. I think the bottom two cards are from the 1930's, the top two from the 1940's.



...and a few more cool one's from the 30's and 40's.



I got these both for 99 cents at two different Goodwill stores, the Blue one(R&W Berries Co's 1971) here in town, and the devil(R&W Berries Co's 1972) in Battle Creek. I'm sure they were someone's Valentine's gift at one time.



I got this bad-ass rock art(or whatever you call that stuff...little glued-on colored rocks) poodle for Melanie for Valentine's day this year. It's gotta be from sometime in the 50's or 60's...not sure. She loves it, so do I.



Finally, I got this at the other Goodwill in Battle Creek last year, and it's one of my favorite possessions. It was in a huge box of pretty terrible art I imagine was donated from some community center art class. The sweater and the girl's hair are textured with puff paint. It doesn't show up great here, but the teeth are drawn in pencil. The hands are all shaped weird and stubby. There's some random glitter on the guy's shirt for no reason. But they sure are in love. Happy (late)Valentine's Day!