The Funnies - Portrait of a Firecracker (1914)

Life Magazine, July 2, 1914

More firework hating from Life Magazine. I have to wonder if the publisher back in 1914 had a really bad encounter with a sparkler when he was a kid. He sure seems to be traumatized by pyrotechnics!

The Funnies - Bonus July Calendar

Our Cute Efficiency Vacation Chart for July or the Nifty Aid for Undetermined Souls with a Lust for Loafing

The Judge Magazine, July 1920

Happy 4th of July!

The Campbell's Soup kids are armed to the teeth and ready to celebrate! Happy 4th everyone!

The Funnies - Fourth of July Special (1898)

Before and after taking.

July 7, 1898, Life Magazine

Cell Mates - Blue Moon Baby

It's blue moon time again and to honor the second full moon of July 2015, I figured I'd throw on a little rockabilly. Here's Blue Moon Baby by the Cell Mates!

Happy 4th of July!

Little Timmy always was a sicko, now he's got a job at the Pentagon and mom and dad are so proud! Happy 4th everyone!

Special Edition The Funnies - Old Friends Meet (1914)

Life Magazine, July 2, 1914

Apparently the lady finger was the early 20th century equivalent of the atom bomb. At least you'd think so by the number of cartoons Life Magazine ran depicting the Grim Reaper selling pyrotechnics.

Poem for July

Fourth of July
John Brehm

Freedom is a rocket,
isn’t it, bursting
orgasmically over
parkloads of hot
dog devouring
human beings
or into the cities
of our enemies
without whom we
would surely
kill ourselves
though they are
ourselves and
America I see now
is the soldier
who said I saw
something
burning on my
chest and tried
to brush it off with
my right hand
but my arm
wasn’t there—
America is no
other than this
moment, the
burning ribcage,
the hand gone
that might have
put it out, the skies
afire with our history.

July Quote

"I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives."


Ann Voskamp

Moonlight Serenade - Glen Miller

One of Glen Miller's one most popular tunes, Moonlight Serenade, was a slow evolution of previous Miller collaborations. It started out in 1935 as a tune entitled Now I Lay Me Down to Weep, then with lyricist Eddie Heyman it became Gone with the Dawn, and later with lyrics by Mitchell Parish it turned into The Wind in the Trees. In the end the Now I Lay Me Down to Weep version won out and the tune with its familiar clarinet melody line went into the Miller books. How did it get its title? Well, Miller was in the midst of doing a cover of the Frankie Carle song Sunrise Serenade and Robbins Music which had bought Now I Lay Me Down to Weep felt that a tune entitled Moonlight Serenade would make a nice complement to the Carle tune.

Welcome to the Super Moon

The roll of the cosmic dice will give us three "super moons" this summer, the first of which comes tonight! A super moon occurs when the elliptical orbit of our celestial partner brings it closer to the earth than normal during a full moon. This, combined with the optical illusions created by the atmosphere, gives us the extraordinarily large looking moon we'll see tonight.

In honor of our July super moon, I give you the cover for a little moon ditty by Jimmie Crane, Underneath the Indiana Moon.

Jimmie Crane was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1910 to the name Loreto Domenico Fraieli.  He wrote mistral music and produced minstrel shows as well as publishing tunes of his own tunes. He first break came in the Summer of 1941 with patriotic tune entitled It's Great to be an American. I wish I could play the Hoosier ditty for you, but I wasn't able to lay mouse on it at such short notice. Maybe I'll be able to find one in the future.

Happy 4th of July!

 Happy Fourth of July everyone, may you and yours have a wonderful holiday and come home with all of your fingers intact!

The Funnies Bonus - Grandpa's Fourth (1883)

Left: "It seems to me they don't make so much noise on the Fourth as they did when I was young."
Right: But he changed his mind a moment later.
Puck, July 4, 1883 issue

Gold Medal Flower!

Looking at this ad you can tell it's staged. I'm not talking about the obviously drawn in firecrackers, I'm talking about the model they chose. Something about this woman says she's never lit a firecracker in her life. Maybe it's the hobble-skirt. Being an old hand at pyrotechnics of the unofficial variety, I know rule number one is be ready to run for your life. Dressed like she is, this woman would burn to the ground before she took three steps.

It's striking to see a flour manufacturer touting using their product to make sandwiches, fresh fruit pies, short cakes, and biscuits for the Fourth. It's not a holiday that, to modern sensibility, goes with baking. But in 1910 when Scribner's Magazine ran this ad, most people baked their own bread. Makes you appreciate some of the conveniences we have today, and (hopefully) question others.

Swift's Ham and Seiler's 1775 House

What does the Fourth of July really need? Not fireworks or parades, it needs salad molds or what we would call aspic! I'm not exactly sure what aspic has to do with Swift's Ham or the independence of our country, but there it is spelling out July 4 in glistening, slimy, colors that don't appear in nature.

"The 1775 House" mentioned in the ad is Sieler's 1775 House, a restaurant that was located on old Route 2 in Massachusetts, however I had little luck identifying where it actually was located. According to the tiny, detail-less map on the back of the 1930's era postcard shown below it should have been on a farm just east of the intersection of Route 2 and Route 123. The problem is these two roads don't intersect. In fact they both run east-west and diverge from the Boston area. 

Poem for July

Mosquito is out,
it's the end of the day;
she's humming and hunting
 her evening away.
Who knows why such hunger
arrives on such wings
at sundown? I guess
it's the nature of things.

- N. M. Boedecker
Midsummer Night Itch

Quote for July

"Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them."

- Edward Moore

Tommy Dorsey - Sleigh Ride in July

As we welcome that just-past-mid-year month of July, the month of premature Yuletide bliss and sales dedicated to the same, here's a little Tommy Dorsey to celebrate the occasion.

The Full Buck Moon

Ah, July, one of my favorite months. It’s the month of thunderstorms and fireworks. Thunder in the sky and thunder on the earth! I can remember many a July 4^th sweating in the July heat and returning to the blessing of air conditioning smelling like sulfur and black powder. There’s nothing like a good hot dog and some salty chips after you’ve spent an hour lighting up the night in honor of your country.

Though we didn’t have a full moon for fireworks this year, here’s a little on the Full Buck Moon, July’s full moon (caution, I had to go through some acrobatics to get this one embedded - you may get Old Farmer's Almanac's whole video play list from YouTube).
 

Happy 4th of July

Celebrating the 4th of July with the 1931 cover of Boys' Life. Here's hoping your holiday is safe and fun!