Head case

Check out this demented 1908 ad for some dude’s skull-reading academy. He hasn’t left a whole lot for your collage-happy Euro-surrealist crowd to do. The guy himself was quite a visual feast, as this second broadside reveals:

Illussion of beauty

This sign belongs to a beauty parlor just outside my zip code. For some years I drove past it weekly but never remembered it was coming until the words “Illussion of Beauty” hit my retinas. When that happened, it struck me as hilarious or tragic, depending on my mood.

The spelling error exponentially amplifies the unconscious fatalism of the name: “Come on in and we’ll do what we can with scissors, hairspray, spackle, Bondo, etc. Just don’t kid yourself.”