A FASHIONABLE MOLE

I know what my new house will need...a touch of class. Maybe I'll put up some portraits of old English nobility. There must be prints you can buy like that.

Yeah, the Baroque look. 

Gee, all the wigs in those pictures have big clefts in the middle.

Maybe I'll need a landscape to offset them.

Portraits are useful because they hint at something I'm much too refined to assert openly...

...namely that I am...Ahem!...descended from English nobility.  Of course, there are no nobles in my family, and I'm Irish rather than English,  but I don't see why I should suffer because of that.

I'll need to find suitable women's portraits to hint at my wife's pedigree...

....something with lots of hair.

Something very ancien regime.

Something with a fashionable mole.

CREEPY PORTRAITS

I love family portraits, especially those of evil, deceased matriarchs or patriarchs who continue to inspire fear in the family they left behind. 

Of particular interest are the ones who left a will that constrains the family to live in a gloomy, joyless old house for the rest of their lives. 

Maybe their portraits contain the clues needed to discover a hidden treasure, buried somewhere in the house. 

Poor Aunt Matilda: she greedily stared at her father's portrait for years, hoping to discover its secret. Some say that's how she acquired her father's deviant personality. Others say she went mad. 

A death mask (above) was left behind. The terms of the will required it to hang on the wall overlooking the dinner table.

A greedy relative (above) and her worthless husband once stayed in the house for a summer while they tore apart walls looking for the money. Matilda won't say what happened to them.

Yikes! I'm scaring myself! I think I'll change the subject. Let me lighten things up with this cheery picture (above) of Sadie Hawkins, drawn by Al Capp.

Hmmmm. I wonder what Matilda would have thought of Sadie Hawkins...no wait, I said I'd change the subject.

Okay, I'm leaving now. Bye!

CHARLES H. TRAUB: PHOTOGRAPHER

Big cities are a gift to photographers. If you have a camera you'll never run out of subjects there.

What do you think of these Manhattan photos taken by photographer Charles H. Traub in the 70s? Wow! He calls these his Lunchtime pictures.

In a big city it's tempting to take pictures of tragic subjects like public alcoholics but Taub prefers to photograph the more ordinary people who thrive there. That's the kind of subject that interests me. I like to see people enjoying the city they built for themselves.

These black and whites weren't by Taub, but I don't know who took them.
They make a powerful argument that cities should legitimize and promote whatever activity looks good in photographs...within reason, I mean.

Sometimes I like the clutter of advertising. It reminds me that one of the purposes of life is to make things that you sell to other people. The fun of commerce is that it connects you with a community of people who all compete to make life more interesting for each other.

Some areas should be zoned to allow advertising to run amuk.

Any excuse for scaffolding and cranes works for me. Seeing Portland's Steel Bridge converted me to the cause of exposed structure.

FAMILY PHOTOS

Many thanks to Anonymous for these photos from the hilarious awkwardfamilyphotos.com. Boy, I was lucky to get these; if I hadn't I would have been strapped for something to post. It's not that I haven't any ideas...my mind is teeming with ideas right now...I just haven't had time to write them down.

One of the reasons is that I'm trying to learn a program that infuriatingly resists being learned, and I only have a short time each night to spend with it. Bear with me. I'll be happy just to get it set up, and get the cables tucked away, then I can attack it at a more leisurely pace.

Awkward is certainly the right word for these (above). 

This (above) is my favorite of the Awkward Photo pictures. I imagine that the people shown here are a family of poisoners. Over the years the two ladies tried out samples of their poisons on the guy on the left and he lost all his hair and much of his muscle control. He's not mad, though. He's a poisoner himself, and he understands the necessity of practice.
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Like I said, I'd like to try my hand at family photography. If I had willing subjects I'd like to  take a picture where everybody acts out a character. Imagine the four people above in a single picture.  A whole family of over-actors.

A horrific, underlit family (above) would be nice...



...as would a family of super-intelligent space invaders (above). All it would take is the right lighting and the right clothes.

Imagine a family photo where everybody had wide-angle heads like Hillary in the picture above.

Of course I'd take some classic pictures (above) too, but only if I had the right subjects.

A TERRIFIC PHOTOGRAPHER...BUT WHO IS HE?

I just had the weirdest experience! I just spent hours writing what I thought would be my best blog post ever. I was so proud of it that I was going to let it stay up all weekend so readers would have time to re-read it over and over again, and reflect on it. I imagined dads reading it to their kids and the kids being forever changed by it and growing up to be President and all that. I bit my lip the whole time I was writing. Anyway, when it was almost finished, I came to a depressing realization. I just couldn't bear to give it away for free.

I'm determined that, even if it's objectively bad, and even if I only get paid in back issues of some obscure magazine, that I'm going to sell this thing. I've gotta do it, just to say that I did it.

So that leaves me with an unexpected space to fill, and I'm too sleepy to think. Fortunately I have something really neat to share, and here it is...four of the best photos that I've seen lately. The only problem is that I can't remember who did them or even how I discovered them. I hope you like them. I'm not sure if they're even enlargeable.

FACES TO HANG ON THE WALL

I'm always interested to see what cartoonists hang on their walls. Usually it's cartoons and paintings. Sometimes it's music and film posters or, if the walls are dominated by the cartoonist's significant other, stately pictures of roses or horse-drawn carriages. My walls are mostly masks and cartoon cels.  The rest tend to be faces, why I don't know.  Here's a few that I either have framed up on the wall or am thinking about putting up.

This is a nice picture to end with, isn't it?  This is my all-time favorite picture of a dog, the towering Mount Everest of dog photos.

Thanks to Mike F. for turning me on to Julie Newmar and the "She May Be a Bag of Trouble" poster. Thanks to John K for the Mortimer Snerd photo.