WELCOME TO BLOG-O-WEEN 2021! MA-163 - 80s Atrocities

Yes, my little maggots, we’ll start off this creepiest, crawliest time of the year with a new Halloween anthology.  These songs all began their journey to ruin in the 1980s.

01 - Everybody Wears a Mask - Jem and the Holograms - 1987   (1:30)

02 - Wherewolf - Seditionaries - 1982   (2:43)

03 - Seventh Victim - Go Four 3 - 1987   (3:28)

04 - The World's Most Gruesome Monster - Victor Banana - 1989   (1:57)

05 - Violence & Passion (live) - Malice in Wonderland - 1984   (4:49)

06 - Movies - Big Boys - 1980   (2:18)

07 - Live with the Dead - Voo-Doo Church - 1982   (2:47)

08 - I Was a Teenage Zombie - The Fleshtones - 1987   (2:20)

09 - Lullabye - The Evolution Control Committee - 1989   (1:42)

10 - Hydro-Head - The Ejectors - 1981   (3:18)

11 - Diary of a Mad Werrwöulf - Fang - 1983   (2:42)

12 - (I Was There at) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Ambient Noise - 1980   (3:35)

13 - Spiders in My Sink - Thee Fourgiven - 1985   (2:48)

14 - Monster Movie - Richard Bone - 1983   (5:33)

15 - King Kong - Bow Wow Wow - 1981   (2:18)

16 - Night of the Living Dead - Sickidz! - 1984   (4:49)

17 - Leper Colony - The Last - 1982   (2:30)

18 - Terrorvision - The Fibonaccis - 1986   (3:28)

19 - All Black and Hairy - The Gravedigger V - 1984   (2:37)

20 - Gravedigger Rock - The Polecats - 1981   (2:43)

21 - Room 502 - Cursory Glances - 1985   (3:02)

22 - The Twilight Zone - Rusty Egan - 1983   (5:27)

23 - Tonight (We Make Love Until We Die) - SSQ - 1986   (3:33)

24 - Halloween - Scary Thieves - 1984   (3:01)

25 - Texas Chainsaw Baby - The Chrysalids - 1986   (3:54)

https://www.filefactory.com/file/6nppk2p34goe/MA-163.rar

 Well, don’t just sit there decaying, start listening!  See you on Thursday with something putrid!

  

It's October, a Day Early

Here are the art and date pages for October, from the 1971 PsychoFlairapy calendar.

I have always figured that the art was supposed to relate to the last day of the month.  I thought it was intended as  a Halloween image.

But now, 50 years later, it reminds me of The Giant Claw!

The last image is the calendar page as it truly appears.  Columbus Day also happened to be the birthday of a wonderful gal named Kim (another participant in Godspell the next year).

Remember, this year 2021 has the same days-of-the-week as 1971.  So this calendar will work if you print it out right now!  Get after it, kiddies!

See you right back here on Monday, for the commencement of 

BLOG-O-WEEN

See you then!  If your heart can take it!

  

PARD's Third Hand

This is the penultimate crowd of images which greets me every time I view the desktop of good ol' PARD.

Once more I challenge you to ID all the images.

See you Thursday, fiends and nay-brrs!

  

Star Trek FAQ – Book Review

          This 2012 book by Mark Clark is a fine achievement.  I’ve read too many books about Star Trek to count, and edited a half-dozen (see the Jacobs/Brown website).  But Clark has done an admirable job of not only digesting (distilling?) tons of material relating to the show, its creators, and its stars, but presenting it in a fun, not-too-flippant way.  For a too-smartass approach to a Trek topic, read Sherilyn Connelly’s The First Star Trek Movie:  Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969-1980.

            Now that I’ve raved, I’m gonna rant.  As is my wont, I’m compelled to compile.  That is, reel off a list of mistakes that should have been caught.

• ·         In several places, instead of referring to sensors, the word “censors” is used
• ·         On page 197, Clark says that Alexander Courage’s eight-note “fanfare” is bongo-driven, but the bongos don’t come in until much later, after Shatner’s narration ends
• ·         On page 210, someone moves to a “Zen-like metaphysical plain” – the appropriate term for levels of existence is spelled “plane”
• ·         On page 229, “how per powers work” should be “her powers”
• ·         On page 243, we’re informed that Chekov said scotch was invented by a little old lady from Moscow – we all know that in “Tribbles,” Chekov says “Leningrad”
• ·         On page 250, we learn that in “I, Mudd,” Harry Mudd is “monarch of a planet populated entirely by curvaceous female androids,” somehow overlooking the Norman, Herman, and Oscar series of male androids
• ·         Page 253’s summary of “The Savage Curtain” mentions “the Vulcan hero Sarek” when it should be Surak, not Spock’s own daddio
• ·         Page 332 refers to Star Trek “stationary,” not “stationery”
• ·         348 mentions someone holding “the financial reigns” of Trekdom, not its “reins”
• ·         Page 360:  It’s Kirk, not Uhura, who delivers the “too much of anything, even love” line in “Tribbles”
• ·         Page 364 reports that Yeoman Rand says, “May the Great Bird of the Galaxy bless your planet,” when Sulu says it to her in “The Man Trap”

Clark’s schtick of using Trek-related phrases for chapter or sections titles seemed too self-consciously “precious” at first, but I warmed to it. For instance, Clark gives a nice précis of antecedents and inspirations for Roddenberry’s Trek vision in a chapter titled “Space Seeds.”

I would argue with him about the transporter sending a person’s atoms (along with their “pattern”) across space.  I think only information is supposed to be “beamed” here or there.

His chapter on goofs and gaffes that made it onscreen left out one of my favorites, from “Space Seed.”  When Kirk breaks the glass of Khan’s glass sleep unit, his phaser falls off.  McCoy notices and throughout the rest of the scene, De Kelley keeps glancing to the phaser on the floor,  At fadeout, McCoy is bending down to pick up that fallen weapon.

This is a fun potpourri of information and musings on that inescapable, ineluctable phenomenon Star Trek, which (like Julius Caesar) doth bestride the narrow world.
  

My Bike Was Unstuck!

I couldn't tell you WHAT Kellogg's cereal this came from. Probably something with the word "sugar" in the name.

Yes, the word "DANGER" is the wax-paperish backing for the two stickers.  And now that I think of it, Toucan Sam's sticker should be part of the official platform for every American political party.

Ah, those were the days!  See you on Thursday.

  

PARD's Second Hand

 As described in this earlier post, when I got my new laptop I decided to assemble the background image from many childhood influences.  They're arranged as a deck of cards fanned across a tabletop.

Below is the first hand.

The second hand of 13 followeth hereunder.

Surely you students of pop culture can name all of 'em?

Go ahead, it'll be fun.  Be safe and hale until next time -- that's Monday!

  

That Bloody Button!

 THAT BLOODY BUTTON

            It seems that everybody on Earth is now familiar with the Comedian’s bloodied Smiley Face button.  Below is its appearance after the Comedian’s murder, from page 11 of Chapter One.

            Worn by Edward Blake both in and out of costume, it was his wry commentary on life’s absurdity.

            In a June 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, artist Dave Gibbons narrated his discussions with writer Alan Moore about their character designs for Watchmen.  An early concept had the Comedian togged nearly all in black.

So on the sketch that I did, I drew a tiny little yellow smiley-faced badge, almost as a throwaway, because I thought that’s a really interesting contrast. This big hulking dark character, with this little splash of bright, silly color.

            Next came the inspiration which has locked the bloody Smiley into place as an eternal pop-culture reference.

Alan saw that and he liked it. And when he wrote the first issue it had to start with the death of the Comedian. So he thought, “How about the Comedian’s been thrown out the window [and] the first thing we see is just that badge with some blood on it? And then we pull back and see more?” So he wrote that into the first script. But then we realized that what we had in that smiley-face badge was really the ultimate cartoon. The simplest cartoon. A black and yellow smiley face, with a splash of really realistic blood on it.

            But, Dear Reader, where did that specific blood-drop come from?  Whence its shape, its heft, its contours?

           Well, I can’t say for sure, but let me share a suspicious similarity with you ...

            It all started with the Smiley-Face button.  The Smiley was created by Harvey Ball in 1963.  As we see in Watchmen, Adrian Veidt’s severe beating of Blake caused blood to drip onto the button.

            While exhaustively reading, speed-scanning, and inspecting the maxi-series and its various book publications, I came to the cover of Chapter Eleven, and a long-harbored thought came a-bubbling ...

           That shape ... that shape ... that configuration, I just knew that I’d seen it somewhere besides in the Watchmen comics.

             Then it hit me.  The blood-spot shape reminded me of a pylon or support for a spaceship model I had.  Inspired, I got out my G.I. Joe footlocker – it contains my model paint, glue, and leftovers for lo! the past fifty years or so.

            I discovered which model I’d been trying to recall.

           This is the X-Wing Fighter model released in 1977 by MPC.  My own model X-Wing is in fragments – this is a completed model seen online – but I still have the kit directions, and I also still have the plastic support which lifted the completed model from its base.

           Check out the shape of the support, in my copy of the directions.

           This is the actual piece.  Doesn’t it look familiar now?

           Another hint ...

           Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.  In my opinion, the blood-spot’s shape is much too similar to have not been inspired by the shape of the model piece.

 I encourage somebody to interrogate Mr Gibbons regarding his STAR WARS inspiration.  It's too suggestive to be a coincidence! 

            What do you think?