Judge — January 25, 1930 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Tattoo For You! By S. J. Perelman If you are anything like me—and you probably are, I fear—you are be- ginning to sneak off into a corner this time of year to vex your pretty Titian head over the tattoo question, After all, it is over a year since you sten- d the battleship Oregon riding the waves on Grandma's left arm, with Admiral Schley on the bridge—on th bridge of the Oregon, not Grandma bridge—and Roosevelt at San Juan Hill with crossed regimental banners on Cousin Emily’s right hip. ‘That last letter from Aunt Ruby wasn’t too encouraging, either: “I don't like to seem ungrateful, Ernie, but I wish you'd do something about the sailor display with scroll and two guns you tattooed on the small of my back. JUDGE They've worn down so thin that I've been quarantined twice carrier of indigo. a common I can't look at the small of my back without feeling ashamed, so I've given up looking at it, but that’s only an evasion after all.” There, how do you feel now? Will you stand by lumpishly and hear the small of your Aunt Ruby's back called an evasion? Don’t snuffle sheep- ishly and tell me that this tattooing is on the wane; when Ruby and I looked last, it was still on the small of the back, and you ought to know by now that it’s dangerous to tattoo people on the wanes, you clod you. Especially on the jugalar wane. The answer to all your troubles is the new fall-and-winter catalog of Professor Perey Waters, T.T.D. (Doctor of Tattooing). Here is the book to keep in your rucksack if you are ever cast away on a desert island. HOLMES TO THE RESCUE QUICK WATSON THE BEADLE! CAME THE COOL COMMAND The height of futility? Two men shaving each other in a hansom cab with only three wheels. “Did you order another - cauliflower au gratin?” purred the waiter to McPherson. “Gratin? Gratin?” said ‘gratis.’ ” mumbled Sandy faintly. “I thought it 14 If I were compelled to choose between being cast away on a desert island with William Lyon Phelps or Profe sor Waters’ catalog, my message would be curt: “I take Professor Waters’ catalog and Aunt Ruby.” The most fascinating item in Pro- fessor Waters’ alog is the group of ns he recommends for your deat shoulder-blades or torso. Wh: better gift to your fiancé, for instance, than to stencil his chest with a snake fighting an Ame bald eagle in i r, the whilst far below H. M.S. Ineluctably plows the foam-flecked waves and fires a broadside in the eral direction of the Canal? There is something about this subject that would make any red-blooded pa- triot “dig into his jeans” and over- subscribe the next Liberty Loan. If you want something less martial, how about Sheet Here are seven al- phabets and eighteen lodge emblems, all of them to fit between the nape of the neck and the twelfth vertebra, counting from the top. Who could be ata loss for a word with the Turkish, Roumanian, Chinese, Malay, Hindoo, Hebrew and English alphabets practi- cally at his finger-tips? No more cheap stalling around like “I certainly would have answered your letter be- fore, Hussein Bey, only I mislaid my oriental grammar and couldn't thi ik of the Turkish word for ‘lous. With a boon like this at hand, the sting would be taken out of college education and you could send your Melvin to spend a quiet four years at Yale drinking wood alcohol and frisk- ing with the ladies of the town, ‘As for the lodge emblems, there is nothing quite like them for that em- barrassing five minutes after the guests have arrived at your party. Just rip off your shirts and you will be startled at the cries of recognition: “Why, Howard, are you a member of the Royal Arcanum, too?” and “Well, well, Ernestine, I never knew you be- longed to the Jacobin party!” Or the Knights of Pythias, or the Confed- eracy, or the Camorra, or the East Eighty-sixth Street Alabaster-Plas- terers’ Turnverein, In a few minutes a spirit of good fun and carefree camaraderie will make itself felt. Then you can put your shirts on again or not, as you prefer. Personally I wish you would. Just because I used to double for Earle Williams and Bryant Washburn in the boudoir scene that a reason for flashing the pink-and-white form on me from morning to night? My goo’- ness, I wisht I was back posin’ in the Folies Bergére comicbooks.com