pvpool - Tumblr blog

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The recording session for “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. Top, drawing of the guitarist (part of a full orchestra led by Eugene Poddany) by Chuck Jones, graphite on sketch pad paper, 14″ x 11″, 1966. Bottom: Chuck Jones, left, with Ted Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss, at the recording session for their “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” 

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HUM BA-BUG!

Original model sheet, photostat glued to poster board, 30″ x 24″, from original drawings by Chuck Jones for his 1966 animated special, “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. 

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Original production drawings from the Chuck Jones half-hour animated television special, “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, which first aired on December 18, 1966, all graphite on 12 field animation paper. 3rd from top is a layout drawing by Maurice Noble for the film, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on 12 field animation paper. 

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Real talk, though, because it needs to be said: as much as we all joke that porn was the only good thing this place had left, the reality is that it being the only place where one could regularly engage with and promote sexual content being gone is really not understanding at all what makes this place special. I mean we all joke about “horny on main” and all that, but the reality is that for a lot of the LGTBQ+ community, particularly younger members still discovering themselves and members in extremely homophobic environments where most media sites were banned (but Tumblr wasn’t even considered important enough to be), this was a bastion of information and self-expression. For a lot of artists too, this was a great place to come and post NSFW work and get traction that became Patreon pages that became honest jobs. The problem with “family friendly” social media is that more often than not, the ones hit  the most by the whole family friendly nonsense are marginalized groups that have no vehicles to express themselves. Stuff like YouTube consistently bans or flags simple content featuring something as innocuous as two men kissing as “adult” content and makes it hard for LGBTQ+ content creators to compete with their non-queer peers for a lot of those reasons. The ultimate problem isn’t even that banning of NSFW content, it’s the general mess surrounding it and unintended consequences to these groups. For MONTHS Tumblr has had a huge problem with porn spam bots and outright child pornography, and for MONTHS the majority of the userbase has been in general consensus that both of these things needed to stop. Tumblr did NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. When Apple finally removed their app from the store, SPECIFICALLY because of the child pornography, Tumblr decided to do what any rich corporation owning a social media site with zero understanding of what makes it popular would do, and decided that the best course of action was to eat itself like an Ouroboros. Rather than admit that they have done an absolutely shit job at keeping pedophiles off this website and rather than hiring the necessary staff to carefully moderate content, they decided to loose a poorly programmed bot that literally deleted perfectly SFW blogs with thousands of followers, and rather than properly handling moderation, they decided that it was best to simply go the lazy route and block anything even remotely NSFW. They run this site in the worst way possible, and I don’t understand how @support or @staff or their completely oblivious “CEO” plans to keep this sinking ship alive.

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THIS IS BEYOND STUPID.

IT IS MINDLESS PURITANISM.

IF THEY FLAG ROTHKO, DE KOONIG’S “WOMEN” WILL CERTAINLY NOT PASS. AND POLLACK - SCANDALOUS!

TUMBLR: STOP THESE NEW GUIDELINES

Not to pile on here, but this doesn’t look exactly promising.

It means every art blog would have to go through every post one by one and appeal individual flagged posts as not to lose content. Seems unlikely.

How the algorithm is designed to flag abstract art as obscene is beyond my understanding.

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These guidelines should not be accepted. Everyone’s site is threatened even though you may not think so. Let them know what you think. Do as Frederick Douglas recommended about a much more important topic: agitate, agitate, agitate. This is very much like voting - you have to raise your voice even when you don’t think it will help.

New tumblr Guidelines

The new “community guidelines” announced by tumblr are, to me, insidious and dangerous. We’re being told that anything with “adult content” will not be allowed. It is limiting free expression in so very many ways and leaves us at the mercy of the repressive tastes of others.  In effect, tumblr is setting itself up to be an “adult filter”. In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stevens wrote “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.“

My fear now is that the mystery and crime and noir images that I have spent years assembling may fall prey to tumblr’s new rules and old images may have to be removed, new images will be rejected, or this entire site may be turned off by them against my choice.

It is very true that a majority of the images I have posted over the years involve violence and cruelty by one person against another: thugs roughing up women, gunman blasting tommyguns at g-men, femme fatales shooting marks, dames stealing and tux-clad dandies smiling while they turn the screws. These are the dark streets of American culture as Chandler eloquently wrote, accompanied by “the raucous laughter of the strongman.”

I do not support the violence included in these images but they are images that we can no more suppress or ignore than we can ban Mark Twain for the language of his time that he used in his books. This is the way it was, ladies and gentleman, deal with it. It is our cultural history, our cultural landscape. You cannot have “Chinatown” or “LA Confidential” without the pulp images of the early 20th C. Do we no longer show “Psycho” because a naked woman is slaughtered in a shower?

And while we’re at it, some of those who painted the covers for the early pulps were Great American Artists: Dalton Stevens, H.J. Ward, Norman Saunders, Gloria Stoll, Robert Maguire, Robert McGinnis, Walter Popp, Robert Stanley, Modest Stein, Jes Schlaikjer - the list is large. No one should be able to tell you you can’t see any of them due to a painting of a fist, a knife, an unclad bust, or a face twisted in fear. That’s just un-American. It is also ludicrous.

I reject that anyone can tell me what I can see. I reject that anyone has the right to monitor and decide for themselves what can be seen. Tumblr may say they are doing this to create a safe place for all but censorship to achieve safety is a slippery slope. Are you prepared to “exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead roll in a cage”?

I will continue to post what I want, what I think is good and worthy of being shared. I do not post what I find to be cruel or salacious. I post what I find interesting visually. There are thousands of images of true crime magazines from the 60s on what are stupidly ugly and there’s nothing at all, for me, redeeming in how they’re presented or designed or composed.They’re just mean and I won’t use them. Others may think what I have posted are mean and that’s fine. Turn away, don’t look. But I filter myself, you don’t get to do it.

I began this blog as a creative outlet for myself and for something else for the customers and fans of the bookshop. Since then, as of this moment, I’ve posted 15,561 images, I have 61 in queue to post and have 142 in draft form. I had never thought about how long I’d continue but rebel at the idea that others may decide what I can and cannot post. That’s unacceptable.

So it may come some day that there are no more posts on the Seattle Mystery Bookshop Hardboiled site. My bookshop is gone, living only in our memories and in places like this. Building this collection has been a labor of love. I hope to continue. If it ends, it will not be by choice.

If you enjoy this site, if you like sites like this, take the time to let those who have instituted it know.

~ JB Dickey

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ricky jay

watch House of Games

RIP Ricky Jay

magician

author

actor

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there’s a great documentary about the photo, A Great Day in Harlem. Nearly everyone is in the photo - Count Basie is sitting on the curb with the kids, Monk in hat and sunglasses stands behind him, Prez is to the right, Dizzy at the far right end with his tongue out, Gerry Mulligan behind them.

no Bird or Trane or Blakey, so it isn’t perfect...

How A Great Day in Harlem Happened

Art Kane’s photograph which has become known as A Great Day In Harlem has become a celebrated Mount Rushmore of jazz. Stories abound about people like publicist Bob Altshuler getting Thelonious Monk out of his apartment at 9 am to get him to the shoot. Jean Bach created a documentary about the event. But a new book of Art Kanes’s every shot that morning sheds new light on that momentous gathering. Quincy Jones and Benny Golson provide introductory reminiscences.

-Michael Cuscuna

Read and view… Follow: Mosaic Records Facebook Tumblr Twitter

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wouldn’t we all...

For more cartoons from The New Yorker, follow us on Instagram: @newyorkercartoons.

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something for Autumn

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Artist 330_n https://flic.kr/p/PEg256