Hoe Latte Love

 

Let's start this supposed Month of Love with a new music compilation with a couple of dozen ... umm, ... different takes on the subject.

01 - Tropical Fish - The Elevators - 1980  (3:09)

02 - Love Potion No 9 - The Clovers - 1959  (1:54)

03 - Indigestion - The Prams - 1979  (2:08)

04 - I Broke Her Heart, She Broke My Arm - Stark Naked and the Fleshtones - 1981  (3:05)

05 - Humpin' Up a Dead Girl - Hatman Williams (Phil LaMarr) - 2000  (1:37)

06 - Computer Love - Lord Manuel and the Neighbor Hoods - 1978  (1:22)

07 - I'll Never Make Fun of Her Mustache Again - The Dellwoods - 1963  (2:14)

08 - Little Ghost - White Stripes - 2005  (2:31)

09 - Answering Machine - The Moderns - 1981  (3:29)

10 - I'm Losing My Lunch Over You - Luchs Brothers - 1978  (1:32)

11 - Undertakin' Daddy - Wayne Raney - 1952  (2:20)

12 - Living China Doll - Moving Parts - 1980  (3:12)

13 - Girl in a Magazine - The Brains - 1980  (3:07)

14 - She Loves Herself - Nuclear Boyz - 1981  (1:45)

15 - Tombstone Number 9 - Murray Scaff and His Aristocrats - 1956  (2:48)

16 - Glendora - Downliners Sect - 1966  (2:43)

17 - Anorexia - God and the State - 1985  (3:44)

18 - Graveyard Tree - Koffin Kats - 2003  (2:52)

19 - Cancel My Order for Love - Rodd Keith - 1972  (2:02)

20 - Schizophrenic Baby - Sheldon Allman - 1960  (1:45)

21 - Ballad of the Caveman - Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo - 1976  (1:30)

22 - The Stalker - Laurie Powell - 2000  (3:18)

23 - Zombie Girl - Dino-Mike - 2013  (3:11)

24 - The Beast with Five Hands - The Groovie Ghoulies - 2006  (2:02)

25 - Karen Ann Quinlan - Vomit Pigs - 1979  (3:00)

26 - She's in Love (with the Rolling Stones) - The Telefones - 1980  (2:56)

27 - Time Warp - John Dowie - 1977  (2:00)

28 - Two Ton Tessie - The Banana Splits - 1968  (2:22)

29 - I Don't Want to Be Your Amputee - John Dowie - 1977  (1:43)

30 - The Moon and Me (from The Addams Family) - Kevin Chamberlin - 2010  (3:02)

31 - (I'm into) Shoes - Wild Horses - 1982  (3:11)

I ain't gonna tell you what to do, but please listen to these songs for entertainment purposes ONLY!

https://www.filefactory.com/file/6jr4ekaiejr4/MA-186.rar

See you on Monday.  Until then, try and find somebody to love!

  

Secret Origins of Superman's Secret Origin!

It's all true, I tell ya!

It's the June 1, 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes.

And Bob Hughes lays out the previous "official" DC roots of the Man of Steel.

See you on Thursday with a new music comp for the month of love!  Then we'll dive into MY SIXTIES VALENTINE!

 

OKC Memories #6: Bought a Videotape Lately?

It's been a while for me too!

But here are receipts from some OKC-area merchants who seem to not be around anymore.

Sight n' Sound had several locations.  This one on South Western Ave is now a tire shop.  This purchase was two blank T-120 VHS tapes on February 25, 1986.

The day after Christmas in 1986, I bought some VHS tapes from the Soundtrak location on S Meridian.

At Crown Movies on the southside, I bought the VHS of Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. as fast as I could!  Feel free to read the list of "Coming Attractions" for a nostalgic rush, assuming you're old enough to recognize any of these movies' titles.

More blank videotapes from the Service Merchandise on the southside, in January 1991.  The space is now occupied by Big Lots.

This receipt from a few months later came from the same place, but now the receipt gives the location as "Walnut Square," the name of the shopping center.

This last, from December 1991 was for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.  This Sound Warehouse was also at I-240 and S Penn, in the building corner now occupied by Vintage Stock.

Hope I stirred some fond memories of media gone by!  See you Monday.

  

Wonders Galore

Yep, while PARD the laptop is being cloned, it's another conglomeration of covers about fascinating mysteries which might divert your questing brain from thinking that existence is boring.

Corliss's books are big on actual citations of publications that report weird things, from old articles in professional journals referring to things transiting the sun, (back when there were no manmade flyers), to OOPARTs (look it up) reported in newspapers.

Cohen has written a few books examining reports of saucers and critters.  Very straight newspaper-like reporting, with a side of speculation on what mundanity might have inspired the witness to interpret a cloud as a UFO (for example).  Lots of his books are written at what was once called high-school reading level, nowadays his prose might tax the so-called instructors.

This one holds a warm place in my heart because it, and Frank Edwards' tomes, were some of the first I read in descriptions of the downright weird.  Godwin writes about blindfolded cyclists, Kaspar Hauser, moving coffins, the abominable snowman, and others.

I think the appeal of books like these to adolescents is severalfold:

• They stretch the imagination
• They help stimulate analytical thinking by comparing hypotheses and/or explanations
• They show us that "rational" explanations which don't solve the problem aren't worth entertaining
• They prove that the grown-ups don't know everything.

I know I gobbled these books up as a youth.  Why don't you search one out?  Until next Thursday, fellow thunkers!

  

More Cosmic Clods

You may think I meant "Cosmic Clouds," but you ain't read as many of these UFO books as I have!

This 1963 book by Robert Charroux explains everything in history as the result of outer-space guys who bred us into sentience.

Andrew Tomas's Beyond the Time Barrier, from 1974, is only one of the books in which he listed old-time monuments or discoveries which imply (to him) that either ancient Man was smarter than we are now, or had help from friendly Space Teachers.

This one by Sachs and Jahn, is from 1977.

If you're a good scholar (as I try to be), you know that the more you learn, the less you know.  But that's pretty fun when learning about weird stuff like this.

(Of course, after a lot of learning, you develop some well-founded opinions as to the sources of some of your learning.)

Thanks for this trip into Celestial Mystery, brought on by the death of an old friend -- PARD the HP laptop, which held most of my blog grist.  We'll have to scrape along for a week or two until PARD's replacement may be found.  Pray for my quest!

  

Poppin’ Off

How many of you fine folks remember returnable pop bottles?  Yep, pop came in glass bottles.  When you bought ’em at the grocery store, you paid a deposit (2 cents in our 1960s town) on each bottle.  When you went back to the store, you took back your empties for the money back, or a one-for-one swap if you got more pop.

That’s because these glass bottles were returned to a regional bottler, washed, sanitized, refilled, and re-capped.  See my memories of working one summer at our local Coke plant here.

But what if you didn’t drink it all at once?

            Why, you used an after-market cap to try and hold in the fizz!  Above are the ones we still have from the storied times of refillable bottles.  Sometimes you’d have ads for grocery stores or filling stations printed on top of the caps.

                                

            And here’s the underside of the same toppers.  The loops apparent on the top row of cappers was to loop over the bottles neck, then curl over to snap the cap onto the lip of the bottle.  These were so fumble-finger types wouldn’t lose the cap after flipping it off!

            In the top left of the group pictures, are rendered in super-high contrast, is one from Tupperware.  The stamped words are:

TUPPERWARE ®

MADE IN U.S.A.

TUPPERWARE

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

198-22

 

See you Thursday, fellow consumers!
  

I'm a Marxist, Number 6!

The only reason I saved this magazine page is because it relates to one of my heroes, Julius Marx.

It's from the April 15, 1974 Time.  It mentions in passing the infamous Oscar Streaker.  You know about this, yes?

See you Monday, fellow Marxists!

  

Don’t Be a Vandal!

That’s our admonition for the New Year, kiddies!

Do you recall the wonderful, semi-dated The Flash TV series of 1990-91? In the episode “Twin Streaks,” first aired April 13, 1991, a mean ole scientist finds a way to clone the Flash. And, of course, USE HIM FOR EVIL.

Star John Wesley Shipp does a fine job of playing the innocent Pollux, as well as his normal Allen-Flash roles.

One thing which caught my eye in a recent re-viewing of this episode was a headline seen in passing. “Electronic Vandals Pierce Computer Nets Just for Fun,” reads the header.

And this is an episode from 1991, remember!  Talk about prescience!

All I can say, campers, is that none of my fine feathered friends would ever stoop so low. If I learn that any of you guys would do such a thing -- or clone a superhero -- our friendship is OFF!

Examine your consciences, and I’ll see you on Thursday – I hope!

  

Farewell, Jim Millaway!

I was saddened to read this story in the December 24, 2023 Tulsa World.  Why?  Surely you jest.

Because Millaway was an indispensable part of Dr Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting!  (The above obit is from the December 27, 2023 World.)

From 1971 to 1973, Jim Millaway played good-natured, sometimes straight man Sherman Oaks.

He was often the foil for such mutts as Benny the Crusher (above)

or Teddy Jack Eddy (Gary Busey) and Little Darlin' (Janie Jackson).

His parody of local interview shows was called "Tulsa Teen Town Topics."  You can certainly sense Millaway rolling his eyes at Benny the Crusher's muscles, above.

The above article is from the October 10, 1982 Tulsa World.

And this one is from the December 20, 2009 World.

I never met the guy, but I saw him once in passing, at a SoonerCon in the early 1990s, at OKC's Central Plaza Hotel.  I recognized him without the half mask, too!

SAH-LOOT, Jim Millaway!  Thanks for your easygoing character, sense of humor, and improvisational skills!

  

We Just Time Traveled to a New Year!

And you thought only Super Folk could time travel!  Well, they do it different, I'll say that for 'em.

This article is from Amazing Heroes #119, cover-dated June 15, 1987

On the last page, Superboy and Superman do their own version of the SUPER-HEAD-BONK, previously defined here on the Super Blog in a 2010 post.

See you Thursday.  Happy 2024!

  

Bloomsbury Publishing, Shame on You!

            Gary S Cross, Freak Show Legacies: How the Cute, Camp and Creepy Shaped Modern Popular Culture. 2021

            This is a fun book, even for non-academics.  Gary Gross’s theme is that outré visions, as in freak shows and the like, over time become less shocking, and even embraced through a process of “cuteifying” and familiarity.

            Other factors in the mainstreaming of the weird or horrifying include mass-media awareness, advances in science which disallowed the cursed-by-God explanation, and the outsider-as-cool phenomenon.

            BUT WAIT, THERE’S LESS!

            There are so many typo-type mistakes in this book, you will be disgusted.  As is my wont, here is a list, by page number:

·         Viii – the TV show is not Fear of the Walking Dead

·         2 – King Kong was released in 1933, and did not influence 1931’s Dracula

·         2 – The word “and” is mistakenly italicized when referring to the films “King Kong and Frankenstein”

·         8 ­– films did not “get passed censors,” they got “past censors”

·         15 – “audiences pretended to be amazed and even digested” – s/b “disgusted”

21 – “they have remained surprising persistent” – s/b “surprisingly”

·         28 – The Feejee Mermaid (above) was not “a monkey’s head sewn onto the lower half of a fish” – it was a monkey’s head and upper torso

·         89 – “replace them bouncers” s/b “replace them with bouncers”

·         94 – “the Hungarian midget who road into the arena” – s/b “rode”

·         106 – a close-quote is missing in the parenthetical mention of a name: midget “Charles Nestel (‘Commodore Foote) begins oddly”

111 – “Tom Thump’s success” – it’s Tom Thumb

139 – we have a sudden attack of boldface

·         183 – the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein (above) IS NOT “a remake of the famous Frankenstein.”  It’s a SEQUEL!

184 – the film titles Son of Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein s/b italicized

·         185 – there’re a few too many words in this passage:  “as a rite of passage of rite out of childhood.”

186 – the film is The Attack of the Giant Leeches – not “Leaches”

·         186 – the guy who ran the MPAA was named Jack Valenti, not “Valente” (misspelled three times in the same paragraph)

·         187 – the correct title of the 1963 film is X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes – the book only gives the title as The Man with the X-ray Eyes

·         188 – he means “bowels” when he says “a loosening of bowls or bladder control.”

·         190 – “a budget of roughly $125,000 dollars.”

·         193 – the 1979 film is not The Alien, it’s just Alien

·         198 – “audiences were draw to the basic predictability” – s/b “drawn”

·         199 – the film is The Rocky Horror Picture Show not “The Rock Horror Picture Show”

·         200 – “well-healed horror commenters” s/b “well-heeled”

·         200 – “test their metal” s/b “mettle”

·         212 – the ratings system is from Nielsen, not “Nielson”

·         216 – in mention of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, “the” s/b capitalized as part of the title – also, none of the film’s title is italicized

 

Somehow, such sloppy mistakes are more disquieting because this is a self-proclaimed “academic” book.

            I encourage you to read this book, but keep a rubber doorstop at hand to stick in your mouth while you grind your teeth.  Anybody who mentions Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and Robert Crum comix, and who accurately describes the face of Hello Kitty as horrifying deserves to be cut a little slack!

 See you next year, fellow freaks!