John Harvey Kellogg invented Corn Flakes as a means to stop masturbation. Kellogg believed a bowl of crispy morning goodness would stop youngsters from the evils of self-pollution, disease, and possible madness. Kellogg was a doctor, nutritionist, inventor, health freak, activist, and shrewd businessman. He wrote the treatise Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of Organic Life in which he cataloged a startling array of side-effects caused by the “doubly abominable” “crime” of onanism. His list included poor posture, stiffness of the joints, infirmity, bashfulness, and even an unhealthy predilection for spicy foods.

Kellogg believed diet played an enormous part in why so many youngsters wasted their lives in self-abuse. He, therefore, insisted on a diet of bland food, a cleansing of the bowels through regular use of enemas, and a daily bowl of his tasty Corn Flakes.

Masturbation was considered a very serious threat to the good health and clean-living of every young man and woman up as far up as the 1950s and even the 1960s. Some may recall Monty Python’s spoof advert in their Brand New Bok which displayed a naked Graham Chapman under the headline “Masturbation The Difficult One”:

Some people find it difficult to talk about. Others find it difficult to do.

The mock ad went on to explain how masturbation:

...does not make you blind
It does not make your hair fall out
It does not make you vote Conservative
It does not stunt your growth

 

Mr. Chapman and that difficult one.
 
The writer, lawyer, and “champagne socialist” John Mortimer, probably best known for his fictional character Rumpole of the Bailey, recounted in his autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage a tale of one of his classmates, a boy called Tainton, caught masturbating by the school chaplain, the suitably-named Mr. Percy.

Mr. Percy was deeply shocked to discover Tainton playing with himself and admonished him by saying:

“Really my boy, you should save that up till you are married.”
“Oh, I’m doing that, sir,” Tainton answered with his rare smile, “I’ve already got several jam jars full.”

In a bid to stop such heinous behavior, various contraptions were invented to stop self-pollution. For young women, there was the chastity belt, and for men, well, a variety of painful devices including this one which was intended to lock the penis and testicles into a metal retainer to avoid any self-abuse.

This male chastity belt, or “surgical appliance,” was in use from the 1830s until the 1930s. The device may look like a novel fashion accessory or a variation on one of those “cock locks” favored by those into fetishism, cross-dressing, and a little S&M, but it was originally intended to put a stop to young men spilling their seed on stony ground, or rather in their hands or handkerchieves.
 

A male antimasturbation apparatus ca 1871-1930. According to the Science Museum:

This metal device is one of a number of similar devices which were invented in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries to prevent masturbation. A leather strap which would have kept it in place is now missing. Until the early 1900s, many people regarded masturbation as harmful to a person’s health, and it was blamed for a variety of ailments, including insanity.

 

 
More male anti-masturbation devices, after the jump…
 

Dennis Flemion, Mark Arm, Kurt Cobain, and Jimmy Flemion (via Matador)

When Everett True recalls watching “videos of puppet sex created by insane Midwest band The Frogs” on Nirvana’s tour bus, he means Toy Porno, this two-hour video the Flemion brothers made for Kurt Cobain in 1993. It depicts the erotic adventures of a group of polysexual knickknacks, which are intercut with live performances by the Frogs. There is no mistaking the brothers’ sensibility: both the toy porn and the rock numbers delight in jokes that are in questionable taste, especially if you happen to be Rich Little, or the estate of Joseph Cotten.

The Frogs, of course, are famous for their homophile Homestead LP It’s Only Right and Natural, an enduring statement of gay supremacy.

I don’t believe this movie has ever been officially released, though the Frogs once sold the soundtrack on a C100 tape.

Toy Porno is NSFW in every single way. RIP Dennis Flemion.
 

 
Some guy in Japan has uploaded two videos that offered up a clever way to combine nudity and pendulums to create something utterly delightful.

I don’t know about you, but as soon as I saw the description “Naked pendulum dance,” I knew I had to see what it was all about. I was not disappointed. Extra points for the big yellow bowtie.

The earlier video, from December, employs one of those annoying “Newton’s cradle” things that soulless and rapacious executives always have on their desk in the movies. The second video, which dates from this week, refines the concept to a single pendulum, which is more difficult because the orb is always in motion. You’ll see what I mean when you click.

Nothing will ever surpass Tom Rubnitz’s sublime “Pickle Surprise” video from the 1980s, but the playfully transgressive vibe in this reminds me a little of that.
 
Watch the videos after the jump…......
 

Artist Oskar Kokoschka and his muse Alma Mahler.
 
The work of Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka was hugely influential in the world of Expressionism. Fiercely opposed to the Nazis, Kokoschka also produced work for the visual art collective Wiener Werkstätte as well as other designs and stage productions for the Art Nouveau-themed Cabaret Fledermaus. His ability to infuse a sense of dread and trepidation into his paintings and other creations would end up earning him the moniker of “Chief Savage.” Nearly entirely self-taught, Kokoschka did attend the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts), though he almost didn’t graduate. Luckily architect Adolf Loos became aware of Kokoschka’s work and helped to further develop the artist’s proficiency for painting. In 1909 at the age of 23, Kokoschka would paint Loos and the finished product has been noted as one of his greatest works of portraiture. As important as Kokoschka’s contributions to Expressionism are, it would be his torrid love affair with Alma Mahler which led to the production of some of his most contentious work, as well as an emotional meltdown of epic proportions.

Kokoschka began his relationship with Mahler (the widow of composer Gustav Mahler) in 1912. Kokoschka was completely enamored with Mahler, and he spent every moment with her. He drew and painted her image to the point of obsession for the three short years they spent together becoming his primary, if not solitary, muse. As you might imagine, things got a bit too heavy for Mahler and she left the possessive artist. The breakup sent Kokoschka into a dire downward spiral during which he enlisted as an Austrian cavalryman in WWI in 1915. During his time in the military, he was critically injured after taking a bullet to the head and suffering the effects of shell shock—sending him off to recover in a hospital in Dresden on at least two occasions. During his second stay in Dresden, his doctors found Kokoschka to be exhibiting signs of “mental instability” and would keep him around for a few years until they were sure he had fully recovered.
 

“The bride of the wind” a self-portrait by Oskar Kokoschka with his love and muse Alma Mahler in 1913. 
 
Once he received a clean bill of health, Kokoschka returned to Austria in 1918 and commissioned the services of Hermine Moos, a German dollmaker and artist, requesting she make a life-sized doll in the image of his ex-girlfriend, Alma Mahler. During their working relationship, Kokoschka would deluge Moos with excruciatingly detailed letters regarding his various “requirements” for the doll. Here’s one Kokoschka sent to Moos dated August 20th, 1918 which will help further illuminate the artist’s fixation with Mahler. You might want to take a seat for this one:

Yesterday I sent a life-size drawing of my beloved, and I ask you to copy this most carefully and to transform it into reality. Pay special attention to the dimensions of the head and neck, to the ribcage, the rump, and the limbs. And take to heart the contours of the body, e.g., the line of the neck to the back, the curve of the belly. Please permit my sense of touch to take pleasure in those places where layers of fat or muscle suddenly give way to a sinewy covering of skin. For the first layer (inside), please use fine, curly horsehair; you must buy an old sofa or something similar; have the horsehair disinfected. Then, over that, a layer of pouches stuffed with down, cottonwool for the seat and breasts. The point of all this for me is an experience which I must be able to embrace!”

In another disturbing letter to Moos dated December 20, 1918, Kokoschka feverishly inquired if the doll’s mouth would be able to be “opened” and if so, would there be “teeth and a tongue inside.” Once the doll finally arrived, things got decidedly more bizarre. Kokoschka enlisted the help of his servants to spread rumors that the doll version of Mahler was a real woman. He would ride around with her in his carriage and brought her to the opera. And like the real Mahler, he painted her picture over and over again—perhaps 80 times. While the doll did a good job at being a compliant subject and companion, it was no substitute for the real thing. Eventually, Kokoschka realized he was finally over Mahler and threw a party to celebrate the occasion. One of Kokoschka’s servants dressed the doll up in her best party clothes and perched her on a chair in the midst of the revelers. According to Kokoschka, he was pretty loaded, and as he and his fellow drunks watched the sunrise he decided to drag the doll out into his garden, pour a bottle of red wine over it, and chop off its head with an axe. No big deal.

Kokoschka left the decapitated doll in his yard and went to bed to sleep things off. Early the next morning a police officer happened to catch a glance of what he believed to be the headless, bloody body of a nude woman in Kokoschka’s yard. He called for backup and the cops busted through his front door fully expecting to find a crime scene. At this point, you might be thinking this is how Kokoschka ended up with a one-way ticket to the loony bin—but nothing could be further from the truth. In addition to marrying a real girl, he would continue to paint and exhibit his work in museums all over the world, such as the MFA in Boston in 1948, and MoMA in New York in 1949. After a long, prosperous career, Kokoschka passed away at the age of 94 in the Swiss municipality of Montreux. Lastly, if you’re wondering if this might be the first recorded instance of someone acquiring a made-to-order sex doll, it isn’t. If my research is correct, the first dolls used for sex were apparently made by Dutch sailors during the 1700s. The dolls—which were made from leather—were called “dama de viaje” or “travel lady.” And now you know!

The images that follow are NSFW.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Information on the charming set of matchbox covers featured in this post is hard to come by. I know they’re Japanese, any idiot can see that. And I know that their date of origin is almost certainly from before 1950. They stem from a collection of matchbox “labels” that is on Flickr and that has recently become one of my favorite places on the Internet. Vintage Japanese matchbox covers are incredible.

The person who runs that set of images, who uses the Flickr username maraid, explains that the collection had been the passion of the grandfather of a friend, and also that the images date from “1920s-1940s.”

All of the covers feature an image of an unaccompanied woman in a state of undress. There is more than one woman in the series. The images have a very consistent palette of a blue, red, green, and a cream color used mainly for the skin. Sometimes the model is outdoors, but mostly she is indoors. She is never shown doing anything particularly erotic, just hanging out or fooling around with her kitties, that’s was evidently erotic enough back in the day. Some of the images derive from an artist’s studio, as can be seen in the instances in which cans of paint brushes are included.

Before public health drives to reduce smoking, before the advent of vaping, before the advent of widely available lighters (not to mention those fancy windproof lighters), matchboxes were a widely familiar medium. I quit smoking five years ago, and I’ve scarcely lit a match since then, and I don’t carry matches with me anymore (even then I preferred lighters). You’d think that marijuana legalization would do wonders for the matchbox industry, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

These images are signed, which is unusual for matchbox covers from that era—surely an indication that the artist and maybe even the manufacturer recognized these as something special. Most matchbox labels are seen as “just advertising” so there’s seldom information about who did them. Even with the signed initials, I still have no idea who did these. Hats off, in any case.
 

 

 

 
Lots more after the jump…....

A stunning piece from Japanese artist Pater Sato’s 1980 series, “SatoMasochism.”
 
Artist Pater Sato—born Yoshinori Sato in 1945 in Yokosuka, Japan—switched out his first name after portraying Pater in a high school play based on the book, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. When his family relocated to Tokyo, Sato enrolled in a graphic design school where he excelled at illustration. He would go on to attend Setsu Mode Seminar, a prestigious fashion design school in Tokyo named for one of Japan’s greatest illustrators of fashion, Setsu Nagasawa. When he was done with school, Sato landed a job with a large advertising studio, as well as hooking up with Japanese rock and roll-oriented performance group Tokyo Kid Brothers. The group would find their way to New York bringing more art opportunities to Sato, including working under New York-based Abstract Expressionist Paul Jenkins.

Upon returning to Tokyo in the early 1970s, Sato began his career as a freelance artist and his work has appeared in magazines around the world, in books, and on album covers. In 1986 a museum and gallery in Harajuku dedicated to all things Pater Sato opened its doors and is still in business today. The artist died entirely too soon at the young age of 49 in 1994, though he has thankfully left behind an extensive portfolio of work, including a fantastic series from 1980 cleverly entitled “SatoMasochism.” Most recently, Sato’s images were used by designer Stella McCartney in her 2017/2018 Fall/Winter line for men. You can see images from the sexually-charged “SatoMasochims” series as well as other examples of Sato’s work below. NSFW.
 

 

 

Sato’s work in a magazine ad from 1978.
 

 
More ‘SatoMasochism’ after the jump…

One of artist LeRoy Neiman’s famous Femlins on the cover of Playboy magazine.

“I‘m not a scene painter; I‘m the scene painter.”

—American artist LeRoy Neiman in an interview with Cigar Aficionado magazine.

Whenever the Olympic Games roll around, I am often reminded of one of my favorite artists, LeRoy Neiman, who was the official painter for the Olympic Games for several years and widely painted and illustrated vibrant images of nearly every sporting event known to man. Neiman has also painted a massive number of portraits of celebrities and sports superstars such as Frank Sinatra, golfer Arnold Palmer, and boxer Muhammad Ali. Neiman’s exuberant, colorful take on American culture was everywhere during the 70s and 80s and beyond—including in the pages of Playboy magazine.

In 1954 Neiman joined forces with Hugh Hefner after running into him while he was strolling around Chicago (the pair had previously met while Neiman was an illustrator for the Carson Pirie Scott department store chain where Hefner was a copywriter). Neiman would go on to provide paintings and illustrations to the magazine for decades, including the cheeky creation of the Femlins—an adorable group of illustrated girls with black hair, clad in long gloves, thigh-high stockings, high heels—and nothing else. The Femlins came to be in 1955 after Hefner proposed that Playboy’s regular feature Party Jokes needed some visual stimulation to go along with the feature’s bawdy giggles. Eventually, Neiman’s naughty nude pixies would become twelve-inch clay models with high-gloss paint jobs which were photographed for the magazine including its coveted cover. Then, in 1963, Playboy published a pictorial called “The Femlin Comes To Life” which featured a well endowed, naked Femlin model.

If you’re acquainted with the history of Playboy and their exhaustive marketing, then you might also know there was a time when you could purchase twelve-inch Femlin figures in various poses as well as other Femlin-themed merchandise. If you are lucky enough to come across one of the figures these days, obtaining one for your collection will likely run more than a grand depending on their condition. Original Femlin artwork done by Neiman won’t come cheap either; paintings routinely sell more than ten grand and simple Femlin illustrations signed by the artist list for nearly a thousand bucks. I’ve included some fantastic images of Neiman’s work for Playboy below, pretty much all of it is NSFW.
 

A collectible Femlin figure and a cocktail glass.
 

 

A painting by LeRoy Neiman of two Playboy Bunnies playing pool.
 
More after the jump…

 
I’m sure that many readers of this blog are familiar with the legendary Plaster Casters, the Chicago groupies who made Plaster of Paris molds of rock star cocks, starting in the late 60s with Jimi Hendrix and later the likes of Jello Biafra and Ariel Pink. There’s even a KISS song about them. But did you know that Cynthia Plaster Caster and her friend Dianne (“the designated giver of blowjobs”) also had an album?

Well they did. Kinda. Sort of. Well not really… Apparently only their name is on it, not their actual voices. I doubt they even got paid for it. It’s a groupie-themed novelty record where unsurprisingly the actual music (a competent group of session players jamming on some highly enjoyable blues-rock) takes a backseat to the album cover and the nudge-nudge-wink-wink song titles which tend to promise a whole lot more than they actually deliver on.
 

 
For instance there’s “Lanoola Goes Limp” (referencing, apparently, an in-joke among the members of Paul Revere & The Raiders) or “Seven Foot Drummer From Fleetwood Mac.” And who wouldn’t want to listen to “Joint Venture” or “You Didn’t Try To Ball Me (For Frank Zappa)”? What about the intriguingly titled “Diane’s Blue Plate Special” (“plating” = “fluffing” in the Plaster Caster vernacular) or “Blues For Big Jimi”?

By the way, it’s almost entirely instrumental. Don’t get me wrong, it’s actually pretty good! If you like “groovy” sounds, I don’t want to scare you off, this might be for you.

The album was produced by music business veteran Bob Thiele and released on his newly launched New York-based Flying Dutchman record label, which mostly released jazz and blues, including important albums by Gil Scott-Heron, Gato Barbieri, Oliver Nelson, Lonnie Liston Smith and Thiele’s wife, pop singer Teresa Brewer. Flying Dutchman also released albums of speeches by Black radicals H. Rap Brown, Angela Davis and cultural critic Stanley Crouch, but nothing else that I am aware of quite like The Plaster Casters Blue Band.

The Girls Together Outrageously this is not. And who would have retailed something like this in 1969? Dirty bookstores? How anyone thought they would make a buck on such a product—I remind you that these are not songs with “dirty” lyrics, but instrumentals—is mystifying, but I applaud this misguided, weirdo effort.

More after the jump…

 
Before our indulgent misuse of technology made us a tad brutish and unsophisticated in our relationships with each other, men and women once had a form of ritual quaintly called “courtship” where a chivalrous young man was expected to woo a demure young woman with subtly, attention, kindness, and flowers. Such actions were supposed to signal his honorable intentions, trustworthiness, and his reliability to furnish his intended with all that she might require. (Oh, how many poor women fell into a life of drudgery because of that? I wonder.) Of course, these young men would also have their needs but they could only hint at these through the saving grace of innuendo and saucy humor, which made it possible to say one thing and mean something entirely different!

Exhibit A: A set of American postcards dating from 1905 which depicts a young man and the woman of his dreams. These cards were supposed to show our earnest young man’s burning desire to pop the question and ask his fair lady to marry him. But wait, there’s more… These seemingly innocent-looking cards were also a means by which a randy young git could ask his lady friend for his nazzums, his nookie, his how’s your father, his horizontal refreshment, his whoopie, his you know what, you know, get his end away. Of course, women were far too high-minded, civilized, and ever so polite to even know about such things… But...if ever they did, then they’d know only too damn well what his nibs was on about. Indeed, one of these cards does look like it was specifically meant for use by the ladies to send to their beaus in which our eager young heroine suggests that if her reluctant young man would only ask her to marry him, well, then he’ll get it alright.

Though their intention for sex maybe similar, these little cards certainly make a refreshing change from dick pics and unwanted sexting, but plus ca change...
 

The unsubtle: ‘How about it Kiddo?’
 

The subtle: Ask me to marry you and you’ll get what you desire.
 
More after the jump…

Exotic dancer Carol Doda held up by Peter Tork of The Monkees, and surrounded by the rest of the band (Davy Jones, far left, Michael Nesmith, left back, and Micky Dolenz, right) in 1968.
 
If you were coming of age in San Francisco in the 60s, you were probably swept up in a lot of things, including perhaps the scandalous news reported in June of 1964 about a woman by the name of Carol Doda. Doda was an exotic dancer who took off her top during a performance at the Condor Club (which also employed a young Sly Stone for a short time) in the San Francisco area of North Beach while on top of a piano. Why was this such big news you ask? Well, Doda has been credited by many as one of the first dancers to perform without her top in the U.S., making her a pioneer in the field. According to an interview with the New York Times in 1988, Doda says she was handed a topless bathing suit (a so-called “monokini” designed by Rudi Gernreich) and was told this would be her new “costume.” Doda mused about being “really stupid” but adding if someone told her to do something, she “did it.”

While this would be more than enough to propel Doda to stardom, she would further capitalize on her worldwide notoriety by injecting her breasts with silicone at the behest of her managers at the Condor Club. In twenty weeks and as many silicone injections, Doda’s bust went from a 34B to a 44DD for a mere 1,500 bucks. Soon newspapers were referring to Doda’s boobs as the “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco.” However, not everyone embraced San Francisco’s topless establishments and at some point in the year following Doda’s topless debut, San Fran’s mayor at the time John F. Shelley made the following statement—which is unintentionally hilarious—about what was behind the alleged rise in crime in the North Beach neighborhood:

‘‘The topless craze is at the bottom of the whole problem.’‘

As funny as Shelley’s war cry on boobs was, it was followed the next day with action by the police who hit up different topless establishments, arresting the dancers for “lewd conduct” including Carol Doda. The crackdown wouldn’t stick, Doda and others were acquitted, and the topless craze spread like lightning throughout North Beach, which would soon welcome other topless spots such as an ice cream stand and a very busy shoeshine business. A few years later in 1969, Doda would take it all off much to the ire of California Governor Ronald Reagan who granted communities the legal right to stop topless clubs and such from opening in their area. Reagan launched his crusade against the topless industry shortly after winning the governorship in 1966.  There was also an effort to try to ban the word “topless” for use on signage which failed.
 

Carol Doda proudly displaying the newspaper headline regarding her acquittal outside of the Condor.
 
In between all this Doda found herself cast in a role which would earn her a lifetime of recognition by joining the cast of the 1968 film Head (co-produced by Jack Nicholson)—the fantastically weird flick starring The Monkees, with Frank Zappa, Annette Funicello, and Doda as Sally Silicone. Doda would continue to perform sans clothing for over twenty years before retiring from the business, though she would remain a local fixture in SF. She fronted a band called the Lucky Stiffs in the 90s and later ran her own intimate apparel shop, Carol Doda’s Champagne and Lace Lingerie Boutique. She would continue making appearances (now clothed) at various clubs in North Beach until 2009 before passing away at the age of 78 on December 9th, 2015.

I’ve posted photos of Doda doing her thing below, as well as a few choice photos of her with her darling Monkees. Most images are NSFW.
 

Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Carol Doda in a scene from ‘Head.’
 

A photo of Doda from September 7, 1968, in Ramparts magazine, accompanying an article called “Bugging Cops.” The article provided a detailed profile of well-known San Francisco sleuth, Hal Lipset, an expert in miniature electronic surveillance.
 

Doda showing off her newly augmented breasts.