Puffed Up Productions

Vern Trampe, Part 1. Vern Trampe, Part 2. Vern Trampe, Part 3. Jones Typewriter is located on the main drag of Maplewood, MO — that stretch of Manchester which used to be Route 66, between the old-fashioned Maple Leaf barber shop and the new-fangled Bouffant Daddy hair salon. It's a mess inside. The area up front is the way station for things fixed and awaiting reclamation by paying customers. It is cram packed, ceiling to shelf to tabletop to floor, with archaic business machinery — from every era since the invention of the typewriter right after the Civil War to the advent of the personal computer in the 1980s. The combined functions of all this bulky old apparatus now fit into a pocket-sized smart device. The back of the shop is devoted to repair, a frenzied disarray of tinkering: oiled parts, oily gray rags, oil cans with long skinny necks, "World's Greatest Dad" emblazoned mugs full of oil-thick coffee. Repairman Charlie Mays will che...

When did Valerie Jo Kirchhoff become Miss Jubilee? She and partner Dan Conner chose the lively stage name in 2007, when they formed the Humdingers in response to a lack of high energy St. Louis dance bands, especially ones that faithfully expressed the duo's ardor for the styles — both musical and sartorial — of jazzy blues from the 1920s through the 1950s. Kirchhoff's high-flying vocals set the tone for her talented accompanying musicians: Conner on drums, Lawrence Welby on string bass, Bryan Foote on horns. These three regular session men are complemented by a rotating lineup of guitarists and other players about town. The Humdingers' set list of gems from the more obscure pages of the American Songbook, which they initially rehearsed for six months before going public, quickly gathered a hard-core following of Lindy-hoppers, jitterbuggers, jive jumpers, and other toe-tappers across town. When they play at venues like the venerable Casa Loma Ballroom high-school...

On September 6 of 1917, Alice sent a postcard showing the lobby of Chicago's Grand Pacific Hotel to Mr. Henry Heinks in Eden, Idaho. This is what she wrote, in blobby once-black ink that has faded to sepia in the 96 years since the nib of a pen siphoned it from an inkwell: Dear friend, I rec’d your card a long time ago and was glad to hear that you got home all O.K. I have been in Chicago for almost two weeks some place alright. from Alice Next to the one cent stamp, and above the addressee, the words “Post” & “Card” are printed in a green slant of open face type. The top curve of the capitalized “C” is slashed by a weedy dingbat, which is somewhere between older, more florid Victorian swashes and the sleek efficient accents influenced by post-WWI assembly lines. The front of the card is glossy, and when held sideways to the light, a fine craquelure enmeshes the central photographed image of eight tufted black leather club chairs arranged around the perim...

"Puff of Smoke:" Peter Pranschke's latch hook and velour confection is a masterpiece of psychometry. Because you know some old lady once smoked a lot of ciggies on this sofa. "HYPE:" Tim Meehan's paint-by-numbers message gets down to brass tacks! The following piece of pure puffery is from last March! Talk about upcycling!  I'm not sure why I have such a grudge against "upcycling." I've even made money off it: once, when I was selling my Junk Dungeon overflow on Etsy, I unloaded a large box of old cotton sheets onto a paying customer who subsequently spent hours and hours ripping the fabric into strips, and then braiding those into ugly rugs. Does this world really need more ugly rugs, or a cheese grater turned into a wall-mounted pencil holder? Upcycling always reminds me of the crafts suggested by that old Sunday Comics salt, Cappy Dick , my favorite of which was to make an ashtray out of a saucer by glueing neon-brite aqua...

When They Who Name Places spun the Wheel of Fortune, Benld, IL lost a vowel. Actually this mumble was invented by combining the town founder's three names, way back in 1895: Ben(jamin) L. D(orsey). Benld is famous for its coal, its Russian and Italian coal miner descendents, its meteorite , and its dinosaurs, made by an amazing artist named Charlie McGrady (whose studio we plan to feature at a later date). Al Capone opened a dance hall here, to entertain his goons who hid out with the local Italian diaspora when things got too hot in Chicago: The Coliseum, which burned down a few years ago. The best way to enter Benld is through the back door, from the North. Take Lake Ka Ho Road (also spelled Ka-Ho and Kaho) past big old oak trees, down hills, over creek bridges, through fields that suffuse the air with corn dust, like blonde hair streaming sunlight and diffuse notions of "America." Raptors! People in Argentina will pay over 50k for a dinosaur from Benld, m...

Uncle Ugly portrait by Virgil Elliott. Thanks to a splendid write-up by Nicki Dwyer about Joe's Cafe Gallery — which you can read @ Nicki's Central West End Guide here  — we were contacted by a former habitué of Gaslight Square, the artist Virgil Elliott , who now lives and works in California. He was most interested in the photographs by Thelma Blumberg, with captions written by O'Connell's legend Jack Parker, and provided this additonal information about the photograph of the Boneshakers. The bikers in the "Boneshakers" photo are Paul Stearns (standing) and Dennis Brannaker (sitting on the steps). The location of the shot is the porch/steps of The Exit, the coffeehouse at the corner of Boyle and Westminster. This was the summer of 1968.  Dennis Brannaker drove a cab for a living, and at some point acquired the nickname of "Uncle Ugly," after being known previously by some people as "Dirty Denny."  But since there was another guy nam...