populuxe 🍃

@populuxe

sperate miseri, cavete faelices (they/them) — now in my crone-in-the-woods era — tonstant weader — anti-bedtime-ist — always crashing on the same bike

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populuxe 🍃@populuxe· 29d

they didn’t call him “mad dog” for nothing

a comic panel depicting the depression era hitman vincent “mad dog” coll. in a picture that looks like a wanted poster, coll, a brown haired white man looks at the viewer with a blank expression. “vincent ‘mad dog’ cole” is at the bottom of the panel. at the top the caption says “he was really mad!”

from the cover of *crime does not pay* #119 (february 1953) artist uncredited

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 9

the final verse, where the speaker is resigned to serving whatever king will have him feels very relevant to our own moment

But, given what I've come to, am I to blame?
I'm just a wretch who's trying to get by.
The almighty gods should have taken the trouble to create a fourth man, who was good.
With pleasure I'd have gone along with him.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 9

how my mind works: when i got to the phrase “high command” in this line from cavafy’s *should have taken the trouble* i immediately began humming mike & the mechanics *silent running* (i’m not convinced that “high command” is the best translation here, but i barely made it thru 1st year greek so)

But I'm young and in the best of health.
With an astounding mastery of Greek
(I know- by heart_ Aristotle, Plato:
any orator, any poet, anyone you say.)
I know a thing or two about the army,
and have connections among the mercenary leaders.
I'm on pretty good terms with the High Command as well.
I stayed six months in Alexandria, last year;
am fairly well acquainted (and this is useful) with what goes on there: the "Malefactor's schemes, the dirty deals, and so forth.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 9

weird little guy (from a 1952 comic) even the toys smoked back then

an ad for a ventriloquist doll called “happy” the cowboy. the top of the ad reads “HAPPY” THE COWBOY … I'M TERRIFIC!

on the right of the panel is a picture of a doll dressed as a cowboy with hat, plaid shirt, green bandanna, blue pants, brown shoes, and a cigarette in his mouth. an inset picture in the upper right shows a boy manipulating the doll, saying “hiya pardna”

on the left the advertising copy says

• HE'S OVER 19 INCHES TALL

• MOVES HIS MOUTH
ARMS AND LEGS!

• REAL COWBOY OUTFIT!

HEY KIDS — HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO
BECOME A MASTER VENTRILOQUIST IN A
JIFFY! IMAGINE YOU CAN MAKE “HAPPY” THE COWBOY ACTUALLY TALK! (IN YOUR
OWN VOICE OF COURSE.) PULL THE STRING IN THE BACK OF HIS HEAD —WATCH HIS LIPS MOVE — HEAR YOUR OWN WORDS COMING RIGHT OUT OF HAPPY'S MOUTH!

SEE HOW REAL HE LOOKS … RIGGED UP
IN A COWBOY HAT, WASHABLE PLAID SHIRT AND WESTERN PANTS

SHOW OFF YOUR SKILL AT PARTIES —
AT SCHOOL

in the bottom right corner it says

imagine only

$2.98

complete

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 6

mitch mcconnell arriving at the next session of congress (jan in the pan meet mitch in the dish)

a picture of jan compton’s (virginia leith’s) head being kept alive in the 1962 movie the brain that wouldn’t die. she’s smiling, in anticipation of sweet, sweet revenge

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 5

a picture of two breakfasts: on the left is an assortment of pastries, cereal, yogurt, jellies, orange juice, and milk: the caption says “continental breakfast” — on the right, a package of orange-ish hexagonal chips wrapped in a plastic package. the grocery store label says “hexagons (flavorless)” and the caption says “analytic breakfast”

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 5

a scene from the tv show hee haw where a dozen or so people all dressed like imagined country folk in overalls, cutoffs, trucker & cowboy hats are standing in a cornfield waving their arms ecstatically. this was accompanied by the shout “SAL — UTE!”

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 4

happy PATRIOTIC CAKE BALLS day to all who celebrate

a bakery label that says PATRIOTIC CAKE BALLS CHOC & WHITE CAKE

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 3

(hat tip & thx to @josie.zone)

the tv screen of the msnbc show hardball circa 2010? on the left, the head of chris matthews, the anchor; on the right, a much younger tucker carlson looking incredulous. both are staring at the giant head of stephen pollard, the telegraph columnist. at the bottom, the hardball and msnbc logos

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jul 1

a picture of the fabulous quentin crisp wearing a jaunty hat on an english street

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 30

a black and white picture of one of the geico cavemen wearing an oxford shirt and a disgusted look on his face. the caption says “not cool.”

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 30

it could happen today

Demetrius was given to displays of royal grandeur, and encounged the kind of ruler-cults associated with the East. Determined to reconquer his father's former empire, he prepared a vast expedition against
Asia Minor in 288, but failed to achieve his ambitions when two of the other Successors, Ptolemy I of Egypt and Seleucus of Babylonia, offered rigorous military resistance to his plans. Demetrius was eventually expelled from Macedonia, and his final struggle to maintain power ended in disgrace when his troops, tired of serving his overweening imperial ambitions and taste for luxury, deserted him to join the enemy leader, Pyrrhus. After a bit of further intriguing with Ptolemy, Demetrius eventually surrendered himself to Seleucus, and spent his final few years in captivity, where, embittered, he drank himself to death

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 30

my two tips for enduring hot summers, mentally, is: a) embrace the suck & b) find something else to obsess over — me, something about reading big honking poetry collections helps me tick off the days —

a paperback copy of daniel mendelsohn’s translation of the complete poems of cavafy

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 26

a picture of the academic paul fussell, author of the book class: a guide through the american status system, among many others

in this picture he is a 50ish white man looking sardonically at the viewer, his head resting on his hand

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 21

happy father’s day to imperfect dads doing their best

a scene from the cartoon duckman where the eponymous character character eric tiberius duckman is standing on a stage gesturing in front of microphone. duckman is a yellow anthropomorphic duck with skinny arms, a skinny neck, a long beak, glasses, a cylindrical head, and a tuft of hair at the top. he was developed and produced by everett peck, based on peck’s 1990 comic

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 18

it’s a troll doll, a small figure with a tuft of pink hair. this one is smiling

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 17

looking at a 1947 radio magazine today & the best part was the “public forum” page that’s a dead ringer for the onion’s man-in-the-street comments — tl;dr — they really hated singing commercials

Miss Jacline Boyd
Rumson, N. J.
Secretarial School Student
"Soap operas and singing commercials are the bane of my existence. I can take things in reasonable doses but there are entirely too many of them. When singing commercials were first introduced they were good and novel. But a thing that is too radical should not be overdone."

Miss Jacqueline Limerick
Chicago, Illinois Receptionist
"Singing commercials are my pet peeve. The same things sound much better when spoken. A sponsor should not have to sing about a product in order to sell it if it's good. Neither do I like the sound of the bobby soxers yelling and screaming at their favorite crooner."

John Levesque, Pharmacist's mate 2/c
Houlton, Maine

"My chief gripe is against the many singing commercials. Everytime I hear one, I turn the dial as quickly as I can. I don't like those long winded news commentators either. They think they know all the answers."

Albert Markin
Philadelphia, Pa.
Retail Dealer in Sportswear

"The singing commercials are a farce.
Instead of helping to sell something, they only give the listener a big laugh. A good sales talk would be much better and the fans might take them more seriously."

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 17

y’all everything’s going great with the reflecting pool algae. they’re working on it now

the scene from the movie logan’s run (1976) where logan and jessica are wading through the lincoln memorial reflecting pool, tiny next to the weeds and bushes surrounding the green water. the washington monument is in front of them and behind that a glimpse of the capitol

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 14

two 40ish white guys in baseball caps having an intense conversation about catholicism & orthodoxy in the coffee shop & it’s giving exactly this happy sunday

Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses.'

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 13

dad book cornucopia in a little library this morning (my dad, certainly)

it’s a row of paperbacks: tom clancy’s without revenge, cornelius ryan’s a bridge too far, william craig’s enemy at the gates, and ryan’s the longest day and the last battle

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 13

It is a commonplace that our society has turned the artist into something between a spiv, a funny eccentric and a holy hermit in the desert. But the important point is that such a status attracts people; it does not repel them. Thousands who are disgusted, bored or frustrated, consciously or unconsciously, by the motive force of our society, find a justification for their vaguely rebellious feelings by trying to become 'outcast’ artists. Denied a sense of the future or any likelihood of recognized personal responsibility, they embrace Art which they believe to be 'timeless’ and which, according to current aesthetic standards, makes all responsibility supremely and entirely personal.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 13

reading berger’s *permanent red* in my plan to read as much berger as i can during his centenary year & tho it was written in the 60s some of it feels v relevant to our age

When — except during the war years when the hope of victory inspired us — have we had a *confident* vision of the future — as quite obviously artists, scientists and thinkers did have before the advent of Fascism and neo-Fascism?

One of the worst consequences of this defensiveness is triviality. Without any sense of the future one lacks a sense of perspective, and without perspective one is constantly forced into attitudes and theories of trivial opportunism. The history of anti-Communism vividly bears this out. Such triviality is also parochial. Far fewer people in Europe today have an approximate idea of what is happening on a world scale than sixty years ago.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 13

it’s the title of an 18th century chapbook with a figure of a man at the top and the title “an excellent new song, lately composed” below

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 12

In the Beirut library, just to the right as you go in,
we buried wise Lysias, the grammarian.
The spot is beautifully chosen.
We put him near those things of his that he remembers maybe even there: comments, texts, grammars, variants, voluminous studies of Greek idioms.
Also, this way, as we go to the books, we'll see, we'll honor his tomb.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 11

logging on to read the news

a comics panel depicting the head of a gray-haired white man with a mustache wearing round thin-framed glasses. his mouth is wide open displaying just a top row of unevenly spaced teeth. he looks agitated and is saying “gravity around sunnytown is disappearing! people will double up … they’ll walk on their hands … anything can happen! warn them to leave before it’s too late!”

(the panel is from clue comics # 2 (feb 1943), “nightmare and sleepy and the upside-down town”)

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 11

are you wearing the … … the chanel boots? yeah, i am

a faded cover of clue comics #1 (january 1943) featuring the boy king and the giant. the boy king was the prince of a fictional european nation who, with a giant stone golem, fought a nazi invasion. the cover depicts a androgynous figure flying above the clouds with shoulder length black hair wearing a kind of body suit, a crown, a fur-trimmed cape and cuffs, and thigh-high black boots. behind the boy king a giant stone figure punches the air. below them, two skyscrapers rise from the clouds, one of which looks like the empire state building. at the top of the page “clue comics” and “new! with the boy king” is in large letters. on the left additional contents are advertised as “new! cops against crooks with nightmare and sleepy. micro-face and other thrills laughs suspense”

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 9

(the loft generation: from the de koonings to twombly: portraits & sketches 1942-2011)

Holding your basket, I took the train back to Interlaken, where I was staying. I had filled it with French snails and garlic from one the many Bern delicatessen stores, together with bunches of violets Despite the covert stares of the other passengers because of the strange mixture of smells emanating from it, I was happy because we had hatched a scheme for the imminent carnival. You had always been passionately involved in the Basel Fasnacht, but this time you wanted a prize. You knew that masks and costumes based on a timely political topic had the best chance of winning. Then you remembered that Switzerland, with all its modern technical achievements, its pharmaceutical industries, and its famous chocolate, still had no laws for the pareurization of milk. It was a political scandal; among the country people in the mountains there was a high percentage of tuberculosis contracted from infected cows. At some point you said, "I've got it.
We will be three pasteurized cows, you and another friend”

I could not imagine any such costumes, but you could. We sat sewing ins in Bern, we sat sewing in Basel, snipping and pasting and gluing under your direction for weeks, right through the last night before the Fasnacht.
At dawn, in a large hall, the mummers paraded over a stage before the judges, the three of us among them. We were a sight, in green dresses covered with large cow-turd-brown shapes, swaying under enormous masks — long white cow faces with pink nostrils and deep eves fringed with demure lashes, our golden horns spread wide. Between the horns sprouted a thicket of alpine flora — primroses, jonquils, tocuses, violets, ferns, in all the colors of the rainbow. I had been up for nights, sewing. I could see little through the eye slits, could hardly breathe under the heavy mask, and had never been so close to fainting. I heard the rustle and swish of paper flowers and then a hush in the hall and, just as a waitress pushed a chair under me, a great applause.

The Three Pasteurized Cows had made it. The judges understood the reproach. Tripping and swaying in our green-brown bodies and great animal heads covered with flowers, we approached the judges to receive a prize of five golden francs each. This was only the start of a week of revelry, some of which included overturning cars that had the license plate of the hated city of Zurich, directing trafic with a toilet brush, and similar pranks, but mostly a great deal of dinking and dancing. The mask you invented, Meret, the cow face with its bush of paper flowers between its golden horns, lay for years in the attic of my mother-in-law's house on the Bernoullistrasse.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 6

purple prose aside, there are some delightful bits in edith schloss’ memoir of the new york art world (morty!)

Cage was the respected, puzzling Californian, but Morty was one of us. Cage was tied to the earlier Club, but Morty was a New Yorker among New Yorkers. Morty's music was Abstract Expressionist in its looseness and its pauses. Some said it was oriental, some said it was like watercolor in its severe simplicity. Yes, it was something distilled, splinters of dawn and dusk, gritty bits of the city, taut liquid drops and shining.

Morty had the bluntness and wit, and above all the down-to-earth voice of the city. Once, at a rehearsal of his music in Italy when the famous and immensely suave pianist Bruno Canino made a few too many fumbles, Morty took the cigar out of his mouth. "Boy" he growled, "if you make that mistake once again, I'll moider you" After that, Canino was perfect.

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 4

a subsequent panel, same comic. rajah the tiger and andy panda are lost in the mojave desert. rajah says “i’m dying of thoist, andy! dis sun is boining me up!” andy says “let her burn! we’re not giving up yet!”

populuxe 🍃@populuxe· Jun 4

they said sure, the talking panda and the talking tiger named rajah who talks like a working-class joe bail out of plane and land in the mojave desert