My Stuff Saturday: Spending time with Linda

Above is a clock that is on the wall next to my computer. I cherish it, because it was painted by my late friend Linda Miller. She did a magnificent, detailed job.

Every character on the face was someone Linda and I (two classic horror film fans) mutually considered a "friend" if entertaining folk from the fictional film universe can be considered "friends." Do you recognize all the characters, and can you name all the actors behind the roles?

Backmask

Filmmaker Justin Crimone is the one of two men who shot the short film The Drunken Severed Head Show, which will soon be seen for the first time at the upcoming "Monster Bash" convention here in the Pittsburgh area. He is very talented,

This week I watched his 4 minute film Backmask, and it's very good. It was created for and screened at a Pittsburgh Filmmakers' film contest this past Tuesday. All entries had to be on the theme "Urban Legends and Old Wives' Tales," and be no more than four minutes. It won the $100 2nd Place prize against some excellent competition. (Oddly, first place was taken by a film that, as the filmmaker admitted, had nothing to do with the assigned theme!)

As Mr. Crimone describes the film's subject this way: "Our short psycho/horror film about the urban myth of backmasking. Can subliminal messages in reversed audio cause someone to kill or be killed? You decide..."

Go to my Facebook profile to see this short film, which you can do by clicking this link and signing into Facebook.

Municipal Madness!

As I live in Pittsburgh, I'm witnessing an outpouring of happy hysteria tonight! It seems 3/4 of the town is out on the streets screaming and whooping all because we won this thing:

Hooray Penguins!


I never doubted our team would win. After all, we had Satan on our side!

Heads I win!

Part of the fun of my birthday was seeing the nice wishes posted at the Universal Monster Army and at the Classic Horror Film Board. There were so many that it warmed the very cockles of my heart. In fact, they were so warmed that I got heartburn of the cockles!

But I digress.

I want to post here a piece of art done by friend and artist Roger Koch, and a joke shared by my cousin-in-law, Chris Herzog. First, a very nice sketch of the title creep from the film The Thing That Couldn't Die:

Of course, I loved seeing this picture of my late great uncle Hedly. Poor guy. He found it difficult to get work in Hollywood, but TTTCD gave him a starring role.

Now, the joke--it's a classic:

An expectant father waited nervously for word of his child's arrival. After an long wait, the doctor entered the waiting room.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Your child is alive. But he was born with only a head. No limbs, no lower extremities of any kind. Just a head."

The father, of course, was devastated. Yet he and his wife loved their child and vowed to bring him up as normally as possible.

Flash forward to the child's 12th birthday: The father gets a call from a European specialist, who says that a new technology had been developed that would actually enable his son to grow a new, healthy body from his own cells! Although new, the technique had been thoroughly tested and would definitely work. Further, the elite medical team behind it had agreed to do the work for free! Elated, the father rushed to tell his family.

"Son! Son!" he called, as soon as he was through the door, "I have a wonderful surprise for you!"

From the next room where his birthday party was taking place, his son replied,

"IT BETTER NOT BE ANOTHER DAMN HAT!"

Trivial Thursday

More facts to ponder, puzzle on, and dismiss from your mind--providing you have one!



While in prep school, humorist Robert Benchley once wrote an essay on "How to Embalm a Corpse." Later he experienced the process first hand.










President John Tyler is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, but because the monument was moved, no one knows the exact location. He is the only President to be named a "sworn enemy of the United States," (he served in the Confederate Congress years after his Presidency), and was a great-great-great-uncle to President Harry Truman.



According to Bernie Smith's book The Joy of Trivia, "Leonardo DaVinci, when but a small boy, drew a picture of a horrible monster, then placed it near a window to surprise his father.

"When Daddy came home, he nearly had a heart attack. The monster was so realistically painted Pop was sure his time had come. He promptly enrolled Leonardo in art class."


Sources: The Joy of Trivia and this website.

Birthday of a severed head!

Above: I was one lucky drunken severed head the year Coffin Joe (or is it Coffin Ray?--I can never remember) helped me celebrate my birthday!

As today is my birthday, I feel free to post on anything I feel like sharing. Well, I feel like sharing photos I took on a window-shopping outing I took last June--though it wasn't on my birthday. Among other places, Jane and I went to Mars and visited a costume shop! (Click on the pics below to enlarge.)

Mars, Pennsylvania, that is--and the surrounding area. Here's the front of the costume shop we visited:

Here's the side:

A sign on the door that made me laugh:

Cool costumes, props, toys and masks awaited inside.

A severed head greeted us:


Below: Boney McPirate screams, "Avast, ye mortals!" (Or is that "'alf-assed, ye mortals"?):

The same picture is more dramatic with the flash off:

Legal aliens:


Jane the Voodoo queen finds a toy to play with!

Some very lonely-looking Frankenstein Monster masks from the movie Van Helsing:

After the costume shop, we went back to Pittsburgh and visited Big Lots, where I took a photo of a cool monster figure that I successfully resisted buying:

We saw a giant leprechaun on the way back. Thank God he had his gold (and a few mellowing beers), or else he might have been dangerous in the high traffic area:

Then we saw a giant eggman (John Lennon would have been pleased):

Once we reached Pittsburgh, we drove around, and saw buildings that made us think even more of giants:


Across the street, an axe for a rockin' 50 foot woman:

And next to the credit union, a closed and forlorn, possibly abandoned warehouse for a wholesale toy and novelty company, with interesting but lonely faces in the windows:



I went to the front door, which was painted over, mostly:


But I got the camera up against a hole in the paint and found, amongst piles of junk, a mysterious message written on a column:


All of this would have been enough to make my day great, but waiting at home was a package from my good friend Jim Bertges. Inside, an old Aurora guillotine model with a figure that had my face on it! Good for hours o' head-choppin' fun! Hoo-hah!


Today can't be any better than that day. But with the great birthday wishes I've already seen posted online, and with ones sent to my e-mail inbox, it's gonna be just as good. I couldn't be happier!

Happy birthday wishes to anyone out there born on this date, and happy non-birthday wishes to everyone else!