Elegy

This winter I find myself kept indoors more than usual for this time of year, and so I have been looking at old books I've collected but not really read.

The poem below comes from a 1937 hardback anthology I have titled "Three TONY'S SCRAPBOOKS", a gathering of tidbits of philosophy, poetry, humor and trivia by folksy Depression-era radio personality Tony Wons. It collects three previous volumes that sold well. You can learn more about Tony Wons from a 1932 TIME magazine article that is archived here.

I can find no information on the author of the poem, Leonard Snyder, who most likely wasn't an acclaimed writer in any genre. Ordinary fans of the radio show sent in their thoughts and writings, and Wons used them sometimes. Perhaps Snyder was one of them.

I've chosen images found on the net (credited below) to illustrate the poem. It's a simple poem, reminiscent of Poe but without his brilliance. Still, I liked it and share it here.
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ELEGY

I have looked at dead men's eyes

Whose awful majesty

Held nothing, yet I saw therein

An endless mystery.



A dead man's lips are pale and cold

And changeless as of stone,

And yet they strangely seem to say

To find peace...go alone.

--Leonard Snyder

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Related: Johnny Metro's great freaky-geeky blog Midnite Media recently posted the words to the an old dark English ballad titled "The Unquiet Grave." Read it here.

Top image: Statuary closeup found at Flickr account of Sandman1973.

Image second from top: Plasticized, skinned body from the BODIES exhibition--Picture source here.

Image, bottom left: Mexican mummy, picture source here.

Image, bottom right: Detail of statuary photo found at Flickr account of martins.nunomiguel

My favorite "Garbage Pail Kids" sticker

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With a foot of snow coming tomorrow, I'm REALLY wishing I was on a beach right now!

My "Kreativ Blogger" Honorees

Below are my honorees for the Kreativ Blogger award (translation: virtual pat on the back--or head), which was recently bestowed on me by Cool Ass Cinema. (I blogged a few days ago about that; scroll down a bit to read that post.)

Haunt Style This blog's theme: "Images, ideas, instructions, and information for people who live for Halloween, or just want to add some creepiness to their lives." Hey, who doesn't?

A Patchwork of Flesh A site for artists working in any and all media, living in all points on the globe, and of all ages, to celebrate Mary Shelley's immortal Frankenstein monster.

Skull-A-Day A creative, constantly updated exploration of the skull image in all media. Originally, a skull-a-day posting project by Noah Scalin for an entire year; now reader submissions make up the majority of posts. You'll never see so many variations on one interesting theme anywhere else.

Uranium Cafe Bill Courtney's rad blog of retro madness and great podcasts is an act of courage. It is posted from China, a very repressive place to both surf the 'Net, and upload to it.

Billy Loves Stu Although he can't spell "stew" correctly, and never seems to post any recipes, Pax Romano's blog is creative, queer, and fun for all horror movie fans, whether you like classic or contemporary stuff.

I Love Horror I'm giving the award to Brad McHargue's blog because I like his sense of humor, his enthusiasm, his sometimes grumpy but honest persona, and to give him a kick in the ass to get his delayed "Ash Across America" project on his blog!

Under the rules I accepted this honor, I have to post some things about myself and pass on the award to other blogs. I'm going to do that, but in reverse order. (Hey, I don't wanna steal the top billing from these great blogs I'm recommending to you!)

Seven things about myself:

1. I once threw a dinner party at a funeral home. At dusk, we played hide and seek.

2. At one time I was a professional crime fighter.

3. In my twenties, I auditioned in the nude for a play, as required for the part. This was for an acclaimed comedy, and the auditions took place in a Methodist church.

4. I once had a life-size statue of St. Patrick in my home.

5. I have been tricked into going "snipe hunting."

6. I once caught 105 catfish. (Okay, they were only fingerlings, and I caught 'em all at once, but still it was 105! They were freed into a pond.) Another time I caught a fish using only a milk crate.

7. I once used a mold to make plaster busts of John F. Kennedy as a jello mold for a party.

Let's see my honorees top that! (But only if they want to.)

THE DRUNKEN SEVERED HEAD inspires TOTALFILM.com !

The popular site Total Film took a cue from my recent posts honoring 33 blogs*, and upped the ante--they're honoring 600 blogs! Writer Dan Goodswen makes a mammoth recommendation of "600 Movie Blogs You Might Have Missed."

"The weird, the wonderful, the well informed..." is the phrase he uses to pay propers to this crazy collection. I like it.

The Drunken Severed Head placed 37th out of 600, (wow!) a pretty elevated position. If I had real arms, right now I'd probably break 'em patting myself on the back--if I had one of those, too.

It's likely a mistake I even made the cut at all, my inner Eeyore tells me. But I do like to think that I'm weird and wonderful! (I'll let other folks decide if I'm well informed; I think of myself as malformed.)

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*Actually, they're making up to the horror blogging community for the debacle of their recent horror blog award contest, where only one of the nominees, Obscure Hollow, was an actual blog. (And a very good one it is, too.) Mercifully, OH won the vote in a landslide.

Cool Ass Kalls Me Kreativ! I Kid You Knot!

One of the very nicest things ever said about my me or my blog was said last month by Brian Chiba at his blog, Cool Ass Cinema. He said of TDSH, "If the wonderful Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine had an adult oriented sense of humor, the result would look something like this blog...It's a very creative site that monster fans who like to laugh should check out."

I don't know Brian, so I was unprepared for the compliment, but I was very touched. As someone whose life was partly shaped by Forry Ackerman and FMOF (props to Jim Warren too, of course), I couldn't have been happier to be compared to famous "Uncle Forry." Thanks, Cool Ass!

But I do know Brian's blog. Cool Ass is "A site dedicated to the propagation of strange and exciting cinema (and television) from all over the world as well as America's own grand tradition of exploitation cinema classics." In other words, it showcases the best of the worst, the weird, and the trashy. In more other words, it's fun! Cool Ass Cinema is dedicated to helping readers remember "those classic (and sometimes classless) films of old, and even discover some new ones," as it says on its banner. A great mission.

So now I have a new badge-o-honor to wear here! Although, having seen variations of the award at other blogs, I'm not sure it's a badge, or--



--a tablecloth, wallpaper sample, or napkin?

Or even possibly a graphic from a futuristic aspirin commercial:

My first reaction to seeing the badge was one of laughter..."KREATIV? So maybe one of the creative aspects celebrated by this meme was spelling? "KREATIV"? (I was guessing it was started by a marketing person at the "SyFy" channel.) So I did a little poking around to figure out how that spelling started.

Oog! Was I wrong! The award apparently started with a German-speaking blogger; "kreativ" is the German equivalent to the English "creative." Ist gut, ja! (That'll teach me to shoot my mouth off! But I can't help it--I'm a son-of-a-gun!*)

Which graphic do YOU like best? Or maybe it should be this one I knocked out--

Who knew Bismarck looked so much like Bram Stoker's description of Count Dracula?**

Next post, I'll share my list of honorees I've picked. (Have a blog? I can be bribed with large denominations sent in plain brown wrappers. )



*My daddy was Lewis Grizzard. Or not.

**Hey, before I get hate mail, many of my ancestors were German!

Meet Artist BECCA WHITTAKER

Check out this cool portrait of one inebriated lopped-off noggin by cartoonist Becca Whitaker:

This scene inspired by my blog, Shakespeare and old monster movies is her work, too (click to enlarge it):

Franky has apparently come to bury me, not praise me. (Yeah, I know--wrong play.)

A monster and fairy tale mashup:

Becca's the creative force behind the blog No Smoking in the Skull Cave. (As well as the less splashily named blogs Sketches, Becca's Art, Color Art, and Wink Studios Photography.) I've long admired her skill with a pen, and I commissioned her to do a few drawings. I also like her takes on horror and overlooked genre films, and her appreciation for la femme magnifique.

So not only did I pass an award onto her last month, I decided to interview her, too! And she let me! (Foolish artist!) So here is the Q and A, along with pics borrowed from her sites to randomly illustrate what she can do. Enjoy!
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Becca, who are your favorite cartoonists or caricaturists?

I've never been super interested in caricaturists but I love cartoonists. My absolute favorite cartoonist is Chris Sanders. He worked at Disney for a number of years and is best known for creating Lilo and Stitch, but his non-Disney work is very cool; sexy Hawaiian pin-up girls and cute animals. He also did a pretty funny comic for a while called Kiskaloo which you can read online and I highly recommend. I'm also a pretty big fan of Dan DeCarlo, Dean Yeagle and Jeff Smith.

Who would you say influenced your style?

This might sound weird, but the biggest influence on my style is pin-up model Bettie Page and filmmaker/photographer Russ Meyer. Obviously neither of these two painted or drew, but the style, humor and emotion of their images has really influenced what I put onto paper.

Ever woo anyone with your art?

Ha. No, I have given friends and family little drawings to make them laugh or cheer them up but I haven't used my art to pitch woo.


Did your art ever get you in trouble in school?

Not exactly. Luckily I had very liberal art teachers who were willing to let me express myself in my own way...even if it was drawings of girls in latex or creating pin-up girl paintings. I didn't ever get much hung in the classrooms, for obvious reasons.

You do photography and pen and ink artwork. Have you used your models in your drawings?

Usually I get poses and inspiration from old girlie magazines but I have done a few pieces based on photographs I've taken. I'm actually discussing a possible partnership with a model now, but nothing is final so I don't want to jinx it.


You get to have anyone, including people who have passed on, pose live for you to draw. Name one or two.

Oh, wow. Wouldn't that be cool? I would have to say 1950's Bettie Page; I don't think there has been a better model to this day. She could be so expressive and you just don't see that very often. Runners up: Aria Giovanni--she's like the living version of one of my curvy pin-up drawings--or Vixen! era Erica Gavin; in my mind she is the ultimate Russ Meyer girl and it would be a dream to draw her.

Name three strange objects you own.

1. A coin that my grandfather kept in his pocket during his service in WWII. He told me he would rub it with his fingers whenever things got tough and by the time he ended his tour of duty he had rubbed the image just about clean off. He was very important to me and it's like having a little piece of him around to this day.

2. A set of miniature plastic U.S. President figures through Kennedy I discovered when cleaning out an old attic. I keep my favorites on display, the rest in a box. Poor Millard Fillmore.

3. My collection of songs recorded by celebrities. I have the obvious ones, like Shatner and Nimoy, but I also have some weirder ones like "Boy Wonder I Love You" performed by Burt Ward and produced by Frank Zappa...yes, that Frank Zappa. Pure rotten gold.


Five favorite movies.

This is a hard question to answer! These are not the 5 greatest films ever made but probably my 5 favorite to watch over and over.

1. Barbarella (I never stop talking about my love of this movie. Someone once called me a Barbarella apologist which I thought was pretty funny)
2. Tommy
3. Big Trouble in Little China
4. Labyrinth
5. Death Proof


I offer you something to drink before you draw me. I've got everything. Would you want something with caffeine, alcohol, both, or neither?

Probably caffeine, I drink way too much coffee.


Name one OVERrated artist and one UNDERrated artist.

Rob Liefeld is pretty overrated, his comic characters have too many muscles, too many lines. They just kind of hurt my eyes to look at. Most underrated would probably be Burne Hogarth. He's an amazing artist who drew the Tarzan comic strip for years as well as writing a series of books on drawing. His stuff is awesome, but he doesn't get mentioned very often. Maybe Liefeld should read some of Hogarth's anatomy books and scale back on some of those insane muscles.

Photographic self portrait of the artist as a young woman...holding paper.

Thanks for the interview, Becca.

Cool questions. Thanks!