Friday, June 30, 2000

Austin-based comic book artist Mack

Austin-based comic book artist Mack White has created a great virtual museum called Bison Bill's Weird West:
"See THE COMANCHE SCALP DANCE"
"See THE HEAD OF BLACK JACK KETCHUM"
"See A FLYING BUFFALO"
"Also, in Bison Bill's Western Library: THE TREASURE OF THE CHIHUAHUAN DESERT"

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:48:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 29, 2000

Good article in Forbes on

Good article in Forbes on perpetual-motion crackpots and the suckers who fall for them.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:12:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 28, 2000

A grunt worker at the

A grunt worker at the San Francisco Kozmo.com warehouse writes about how horrible it is to work there.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:17:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 27, 2000

Short bio of offbeat mid-century

Short bio of offbeat mid-century cartoonist Virgil Partch.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:44:12 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 22, 2000

Nancy was one of my

Nancy was one of my favorite comic strips. (I mentally put a red X across the face of anyone I meet who can't appreciate the genius of Ernie Bushmiller.) Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, has rules for a game he invented called "5-Card Nancy" that uses cut-up photocopies of Nancy comics.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:21:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 21, 2000

Excellent mini-gallery of monster decals

Excellent mini-gallery of monster decals from the '60s.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:42:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"The Alien" is a short

"The Alien" is a short story that appeared in a 1958 issue of Adam.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:32:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Freeman Dyson on religion: "Religion

Freeman Dyson on religion: "Religion amplifies the good and evil tendencies of individual souls. Religion will always remain a powerful force in the history of our species." (From Cliff Pickover's Encyclopedia of the Bible)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:56:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Paul Tough is a former

Paul Tough is a former editor at Harpers. He also co-published a great zine, called Paris in the 20s, which consisted entirely of clippings of strange reporting from the New York Times. I met Paul when he came to the Wired offices to talk about possibly working for an ill-fated spin-off magazine. We had lunch together and I thought he was very nice and funny. Now he has a new daily site, called Open Letters, "a new magazine of first-person writing in the form of personal correspondence." He writes that he came up with the idea for the site from the way he worked at Harper's: "One editors' trick I started using a while ago is to ask a thwarted writer to start off by writing me a letter on the topic. What comes out is often much more fluid, funny, on-topic, and well-structured than a formal magazine article."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:46:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 20, 2000

New NetBaby games.

New NetBaby games.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:22:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 19, 2000

More carnival autobiography. "I was

More carnival autobiography.
"I was in a Hey Rube in Lincoln, Illinois, once. It was one of the toughest battles I ever seen. The town boys was coalminers and same of the toughest customers I ever seen. We strung out in a circle around our stuff and stood 'em off with "laying out pins" and whacked 'em with "side-poles", finally giving 'em the run, but they sure could take it. Another Hey Rube in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was started by a gang of students from the University of Michigan, for no good reason at all except perhaps they thought it was funny. It cost the circus I was with more than $35,000 in lawsuits and damage to equipment. In a Hey Rube, most of the lawsuits that follow is usually by some innocent bystander who gets hurt in the scramble."

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:24:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chapter from 1933 carnival autobiography,

Chapter from 1933 carnival autobiography, Hey Rube.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:19:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

64-year-old Down East Bob's response

64-year-old Down East Bob's response to the end of The Hobo Times.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:13:23 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Excellent archive of retro product

Excellent archive of retro product packaging and display graphics. (From Xplane xblog)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:39:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 16, 2000

Good short bio of Yellow

Good short bio of Yellow Kid Weil, the world's greatest con artist.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:27:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

There's a new biography of

There's a new biography of Leon Theremin. Might be good, but it might be a load of academia-la-la, as it was written by a PhD and came out on a university press.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:46:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 15, 2000

Visit Port Watson, is about

Visit Port Watson, is about a freedom-lovers' island in the Pacific. I loved this when I first read it around ten years ago, and my friends and I prayed that it was true.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:17:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

W. Heath Robinson was a

W. Heath Robinson was a UK cartoonist who drew crazy inventions, sort of like Rube Goldberg. (Thanks hoppersw@cf.ac.uk)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:34:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Laff In The Dark has

Laff In The Dark has articles and pictures of old funhouses and "darkrides." I love the smell of darkrides.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:26:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, June 13, 2000

Great article about polish artist

Great article about polish artist Stanislav Szukalski by Jim Woodring.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:18:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A sample of Rube Goldberg

A sample of Rube Goldberg cartoons. Goldberg was a cartoonist who drew ridiculously complicated machines (similar to the game "Mousetrap").

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:26:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Even bondage enthusiasts need to

Even bondage enthusiasts need to clean up the house.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:28:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 9, 2000

Excellent online encyclopedia of Warner

Excellent online encyclopedia of Warner Brothers animation brought to you by your friends at posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:24:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Short Harvey Kurtzman profile.

Short Harvey Kurtzman profile.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:14:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Chicken gristle, or alien implant?

Chicken gristle, or alien implant? You decide.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:08:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 7, 2000

Yet another interview with the

Yet another interview with the world's best comic book artist/writer, Dan Clowes.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:54:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

An insider's account of the

An insider's account of the rise and fall of GettingIt.com

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:53:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Interview with journalist Lester Bangs'

Interview with journalist Lester Bangs' biographer.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 09:53:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, June 5, 2000

Laff In The Dark has

Laff In The Dark has articles and pictures of old funhouses and "darkrides." I love the smell of darkrides.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:24:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Menu for the extinct Tahitian

Menu for the extinct Tahitian Terrace restaurant at Disneyland.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:39:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, June 2, 2000

Reprint of an excellent 4-page

Reprint of an excellent 4-page comic book story from the 1940s by Plastic Man creator Jack Cole. In the 1960s, Cole became a popular cartoonist for Playboy, then mysteriouly commited suicide.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:28:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, June 1, 2000

A 24-year-old gardener claims that

A 24-year-old gardener claims that Martha Stewart hit him with her car and drove away.

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:29:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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