Skatin' Death

The Grim Reaper don't even look twice at your "No Skateboarding" sign.

[A note: If you're not following Weird Tales on Facebook, you're missing out on tons of fun artwork, photos and writing. We swiped this image from their feed. Whenever possible, if we re-post their selections, we give credit to WT, and more importantly, the artist.]

Squash

We may snicker when a teen in Hot Topic goth gear waxes philosophic on the beauty of decay, but reader, that teen is on to something.

In popular depictions, the crackle of autumn leaves and the twilight passage of migrating birds hog the cozy glow of October. But it's the slowing pulse of nature getting comfortable in her sleep that moves the pens of poets. Clouds nudge closer for warmth and the scurrying feet of insects send Morse code to the soil: Good night and thank you for everything you've done. Now rest.

Shh.

Lean in close to carnival mouth of the jack-o'-lantern. His turnip breath exhales a whisper: None of us were meant to last.

halloween pumpkins 2014 from Thomas Vespermann on Vimeo.

If you'd like to see another slightly creepy time lapse video from Thomas Vespermann, check out "Vintage Flower Dolls."

So Much to See

Sometimes we see blogs, Tumblrs and other stops on the web and wonder why we even bother. Then we remember, we bother because if we weren't here to pass the links on to you, who would?

At least that's what we tell ourselves at night before drinking enough cough syrup to fall asleep while listening to old radio dramas.

Imagine some sort of brass fanfare here. Now look!

Can you even stand it?! Yeah, exclamation points. Journalism-degree-be-damned. If ever there was a still from a Disney cartoon that merited a freak-out, this certainly makes the grade.

This is just a smoked pepper corn amongst the bounty of spicy offerings at the Graves and Ghouls Tumblr.

It's run by a woman named Cat who has another Tumblr worth your time, Vintage Gal.

There are GIFs on both, which tend to bug our wonky eyes, but that's one broken match in the factory full of joy. And please know there are ladies in various states of undress on both blogs, so don't get fired on our watch, okay?

Show Folk

Lovers of art and art history who don't have a lot of money are probably familiar with Taschen publishing. The mostly photo, but also fine art and design books put out by Taschen can class up your library and give your eyeballs a little vacation when you want to look at pretty pictures.

Thanks to Flavorwire, we discovered a Taschen book that will soon join the Typing Monkey library:  The Circus Book: 1870-1950. Flavorwire republished some of the photos a couple years ago, so in honor of National Clown Week (Aug 3, 2013 is officially National Clown Day), we link to those galleries.

One is "Rare Color Photos of Circus Showgirls of the ’40s and ’50s" the other is "Incredible Vintage Circus Photos of the '40s and '50s."

They're brief, fun looks at the romance and greasy glamor of human circus performers. Here's a sneak preview to entice you:

Circus people, 1955; courtesy Taschen; via Flavorwire

Black and White In Color

One of the most wonderful aspects of the Web is that reading (or listening to, or watching) things you know, or are at least have intention to know, can take on some of the traits of conversation with friends who are smarter than you.

Perhaps you're reading posts from comic book writer Kurt Busiek and in a matter of seconds, find yourself staring at amazing photos by Gordon Parks, on a terrific art blog called Messy Nessy Chic.

Specifically, Messy Nessy was highlighting a series of incredible color photographs from Parks, a frequent contributor to the pages of Life, that were discovered after Parks died. Parks shot in black and white most of the time, but he opted to document the "softer" side of life in a segregated United States in bold color.

Softer, we say, because, as Nessy notes, most of us are accustomed to pictures of the Civil Rights era, and the years leading up to it, depicting violence or clear indications of a nation about to boil over.

These shots instead show an almost mundane, yet still massively loaded, everyday-ness of living in a world of denial.

Check out the Parks page on Messy Nessy, then dig around the rest of her site. Who knows where you'll end up.

Look! Quick, Before It's Gone

Should you see this post on or before Jan 27, 2013, you'll probably be able to open the page linking to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibiton Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop.

The exhibit's been up since Oct 11, 2012 but we only learned of it's existence a couple weeks ago and didn't think to see if the Met posted every image from the exhibition on their website. What fools we are. The Met is awesome, so of course the entire exhibit is online.

As the title implies, the photos show how manipulating photographs evolved concomitant to the art of photography itself. From touch ups, to double exposures, coloring, and out-and-out trickery, the images show how creative we can be when given a new medium that feels limitless but actually puts quite a few borders around production.

Of course, those borders can be pushed as far as possible and then further still. Here are a few of our favorites:

Le simulateur; Dora Maar (French, Paris 1907–1997 Paris) Date: 1936

Soft Landing; Oliver Wasow (American, born 1960) Date: 1987

New Blanket Provides Protection Against Radiation; Unknown, British; Date: 1954

 

And because we try to keep The Typing Monkey safe for work, here are links to Woman in Champagne Glass by Howard S. Redell and Woman Riding Moth (Unknown). [Hint: They're naked! But it's just regular naked, not freak out your co-workers naked.]

 

Click here to see the gallery set up to 60 images per page, which whittles it down to just four pages. Have fun.



Ladies of Sport and a Love Letter to Disco

The real story here is that Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton has joined Twitter. Please, just ... you don't know what the past week has been like. He reads and chuckles all day, mumbling about Drunk Hulk and Snake & Bacon.

However, he has shared a few items of value with us and we would bebad friends if we didnt' share the following link with you:

 

http://worldinsport.com/2010/11/sportswomen-of-past-homage-with-vintage-html/

It's U.S. Library of Congress photos of Victorian era (and just beyond) women who played sports -- in full Victorian dress. You'll see the Bennett Sisters and many others.

***

In the interest of variety, we also highly recommend reading Dorian Lynksey's convincing argument from The Guardian, asserting that disco lives on in the form of most modern pop music. "Long Live Disco" will either make you nod in agreement or hassle the person sitting next to you with your counter argument. You will lose.



[Photo: Detail from "Miss Isabel Tennant"]

The Only Way In

We turned you on to Andrew Monko's photography a while back. His preference for rural and urban decay, the ways in which nature takes back man made objects, and his penchant for experimenting with light all appeals deeply to The Typing Monkey aesthetic.

Check out the photographer's series Scary Dairy. With some solid historical framing, he takes the viewer on a brief tour of the defunct, decaying and possibly haunted remnants of an abandoned mental hospital in the vast farming valley of the northern Puget Sound region of Washington state.

We're particularly fond of "Murakami Silo" and you'll have a favorite too. Here's a detail from "In the Silence They Wait":

Look!

Andrew Monko has a camera. He uses it to take pictures of people, places and things. Some of these photographs are pure documentary, some are staged, others get experimental. See what he does with his camera on Flickr.

"Tombstone Row" by Andrew Monko, from the series Airstream Junkyard; Jun 2011.

This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

Check out "Graduation Day" from MSNBC's photoblog.