October Collections Post

I spend a lot of time in antique stores, second hand book shops, and flea markets, and sometimes the desire to add something to the collection overwhelms my inherent cheapness.   Let's look at a few recent items added to the shelves and stacks at MPorcius HQ.  I think if you click, you can see larger versions of the photos.

At the most recent Big Flea event in the DMV, I think at Timonium, MD, I spent fifty bucks on this copy of Victor Arwas' Art Deco Sculpture, which is more than I like to pay for anything, but there were a bunch of images in it I had never seen before, so I ponied up the cash.

At the Wonder Book in Hagerstown, MD I spent ten dollars on this paperback copy of The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz by Weston Naef, which is closer to what I like to pay for art books.  Last time I checked, you can look at a scan of this book at the internet archive at this link.  

Whenever I am flipping through Cold War-era issues of my favorite magazine about jazz, Playboy, I read the one-panel cartoons.  And, of course, some of the SF magazines have these sorts of one-panel cartoons.  Just recently, you may recall, I read two or three entire books of such cartoons by Peter Arno.  So I was intrigued when I saw Ghouling Around, edited by Phil Hirsch and Paul Laikin, at Route 11 Antique Mall in Hagerstown, MD, and bought it for three bucks.  The content of this book turns out to largely consist of groan-inducing puns for children, but there are also some cartoons I have to admit I didn't really get.  Two are reproduced above; maybe you can explain them to me.  On the left, we have a dog stabbing a man in the back as he reads a newspaper.  What is the joke?  Is it a riff on the cliche that "dog bites man" is not news but "man bites dog" is news?  Are we supposed to consider whether "dog stabs man" is news?  Or maybe the joke is that the man has in the past hit the dog with a rolled-up newspaper, and, so seeing the man with a newspaper in his hand, the dog has decided to launch a preemptive strike on his supposed master?  On the right, we have a fat janitor in the morgue, smiling down at a dead body as he grips his broom.  Why is he smiling?  Is he going to eat the corpse?  Is that why he is fat?  I hope the joke isn't that he is a necrophiliac, that the way he holds is broom handle is supposed to make us think of masturbation.  Could it just be that he swept dust into the drawer wherein resides the deceased, like the traditional joke in which a lazy worker sweeps dust under a rug?  "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"?  I don't get it.

As a kid I was dinosaur-crazy, and I still love dinosaurs, not necessarily the science of paleontology, but dramatic and gruesome representations of dinosaurs, like in old paintings such as those of Zdenek Burian and Charles R. Knight, and old movies, like the original King Kong, the greatest film of all time.  I collect the dinosaur books I had as a kid and those I borrowed from libraries, and books from the same era with a similar aesthetic.  At an antique mall in Spencer, WV, I picked up this British dinosaur book for like $1.50, it being on sale.  This book's art is pretty amateurish, the colors drab, the perspective and anatomy questionable, and the dinosaurs wearing human-like expressions, but it is suitably gruesome.  I also have to wonder about the science presented in the book, though, when a three-fingered horned dinosaur is labelled "Tyrannosaurus Rex."

Speaking of dinosaurs, I picked up a plateosaurus I think is by Marx (the seller said it was Marx) at a flea market in an outlet mall parking lot for 25 cents and three Flintstones figures--plus a stegosaurus--for a similar price at a yard sale in a church parking lot.

Let's finish up with this (original, repro, or totally bogus, I have no idea) lobby card for the 1925 film The Lost World, a pioneering special effects film featuring many dinosaurs fighting each other and running amok in London.

Maybe we'll do this again next month; until then, keep an eye open for bargains and keep an eye on your dog.