MA-149 - An Old-Fashioned Halloween -- Welcome to BLOG-O-WEEN!

Yes, my friends, this is the most delicious time of year -- Halloween time!

To kick off this magic, spooky, wacky season, here's a new music compilation. The tracks:

01 - Halloween Party - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:31)

02 - Main Title (It! The Terror from Beyond Space) - Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter - 1958  (1:05)

03 - Hey Jude - Paul Frees - 1970  (3:53)

04 - Weebles Haunted House - Hasbro Playskool - 1976  (0:29)

05 - Monster Approaches (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:45)

06 - Halloween Driving Safety - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:31)

07 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #1 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (0:37)

08 - Attack of the Mole Men - The Dickies - 1979  (3:40)

09 - Main Title / Shooting Stars (This Island Earth) - Herman Stein - 1978  (3:49)

10 - The Mad Scientist - The Zanies - 1958  (1:59)

11 - The Munsters (1st Season Opening Theme) - Jack Marshall - 1964  (0:44)

12 - The Munsters (1st Season End Credits) - Jack Marshall - 1964  (0:31)

13 - Hollywood Halloween - Section 8 - 1979  (3:06)

14 - Mysterioso, Burglar Music - J S Zamecnik - 1913  (0:46)

15 - Plodding Monster (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:37)

16 - The Raven - Kenny and the Fiends - 1963  (1:55)

17 - The Witch (Album Version) - The Rattles - 1970  (2:56)

18 - Halloween Values - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:28)

19 - Sonik Re-Entry (Fantastic Theatre) - The Electrosonics - 1962  (2:34)

20 - Son of Dracula Main Title - Hans J Salter - 1978  (1:07)

21 - TV Monster - The Bounce - 1980  (2:49)

22 - Return to the the Haunted House - The Fleshtones - 1985  (2:22)

23 - Visitors from Space (It Came from Outer Space) - Herman Stein - 1978  (1:40)

24 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #2 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (1:05)

25 - What Can We Be for Halloween? - Jill Gallina - 1978  (2:05)

26 - Halloween Treats & Candy - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:28)

27 - Mysterioso Pizzicato - J Bodewalt Lampe - 1914  (0:22)

28 - Spookie Movies - Gary Paxton - 1962  (2:17)

29 - Night Gallery Theme - Gil Melle - 1970  (0:36)

30 - The Octopus - Angel and the Devines - 1964  (2:13)

31 - Halloween Jingle - William B Tanner Co - 1974  (0:32)

32 - Plan 9 from Outer Space - The Happy Few - 1981  (3:36)

33 - Shocks and Stingers (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (1:11)

34 - Graveyard Theme (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) - Vince Guaraldi - 1966  (0:53)

35 - Dumb Ways to Die - Metro Trains Melbourne - 2012  (3:00)

36 - Monsters (Jonny Quest) - Hoyt Curtin & Ted Nichols - 1964  (0:51)

37 - Do They Know It's Halloween? - North American Halloween Prevention Initiative - 2005  (5:52)

38 - Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Underscore #3 - Ted Nichols - 1969  (0:45)

39 - Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Contest - Pepper Tanner Creative Sales Service - 1973  (0:33)

40 - Winged Death (The Deadly Mantis) - William Lava - 1978  (2:53)

41 - Trick or Treat (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) - John Scott Trotter - 1966  (1:14)

42 - The Night Stalker Suite - Robert Cobert - 1972  (4:00)

43 - Prologue - Welcome to Creepshow - John Harrison - 1982  (4:07)

 

And, to quote the liner notes:     It’s our hope that these selections from TV, film, advertising, and pop music will help rekindle some of the childlike anticipation and corniness inherent in an old-fashioned Halloween!

 

https://www.filefactory.com/file/6fzg0bi84bv2/MA-149.rar

 

Come back on Monday for more!  See you then!

   

October 1970 -- Use It for 2020, Too!

Here are the October header-art page and the calendar page for October 1970, which also matches the days of 2020.

And as you can see, you can even print the art page out and finish coloring it.  For some reason I left a lot of white space 50 years ago.

See you on Thursday, October 1st, for the beginning of the wild ride that is 2020's BLOG-O-WEEN!

  

In 1992, Horror of Horrors!

Yep, Ol' Supes was slated to croak.  And it was serious business, baby!

Thanks, DC -- "No comment"!

Well, we all know how this horror of horrors turned out.  Who would've believed that for all those 50+ plus years, the Anti-Humanite had REALLY traded his/her brain with Superman's!  And that Green Lantern's Power Ring's vulnerability to yellow things could somehow interact with Gold Kryptonite and switch Superman's brain out of the A-H's un-super human body, and into a cloned replica from the 1960s.  That backup clone of himself that Superman made back in 1961, before entering the Phantom Zone for the first time, really came in handy!

And I, for one, didn't expect that the mind transfer would somehow erase all of the crap from John Byrne's reboot!  It's a good thing that Alan Moore was willing to rescue the Action Ace!  And the combo of Curt Swan and Wayne Boring alternating issues was a jolt, but a great salute to history!

What do you think about the way they brought Superman back?

  

More Ado About Holmes

As a combination clipping bureau and packrat, I accumulated these advertisements and articles about that ol’ Consulting Detective of Baker Street.

            A previous post about some other Holmesiana is here.

             When the public learned about the infamous 18-minute gap in Nixon’s secretly recorded White House tapes, speculation abounded as to the topic.  Aliens?  Pot-roast recipes?  Jimmy Hoffa?

            Well, a smart aleck named Stefan Kanfer decided to corral history’s most famous detective and sic him on the case.  Kanfer does a cute job of looping in England’s 1970s socialism, the Energy Crisis, and ... read for yourself!

            Of course, just because Holmes solved the case, that doesn’t mean he will tell us...

            Later that year of 1974, Nick Meyer’s masterful pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution rated this review from Time.

            A couple of years later, the film adaptation was surveyed by Newsweek.

            And similarly in a review published in the Tulsa World, the day after Christmas, 1976.

         

 Holmes and Watson were sufficiently well-known to plug cars on TV and in print ads.  Even the tracking dog Toby (from The Sign of the Four but resurrected by Meyer in Seven-Per-Cent) makes an appearance!

           When Meyer’s sequel, The West End Horror, arrived, the paperback rights were snapped up by Ballantine, who took out the above ad in Publishers Weekly to lay out their publicity campaign.

             Well, that’s it for this collection of stuff exhumed from books.  See you next time!

  

From "The Book of Nescafehiah"

In 1980 I was working for the Southwest Radio Church, which still exists today.

I was editing, proofing, and sometimes writing feature-type articles for them.

I got a sad reminder of the fallibility of human nature when I noticed small disagreements turn into backbiting behind-the-back phone calls, and such.  My separation after six months was due to one of my own faults.

One of the minor controversies involved the break area, and how folks would use a (metal) spoon for stirring their drink, then dip the wet spoon into sugar or powdered creamer, etc.  You ended up with an encrusted spoon and stuff in your drink from the encrustation.

Since SWRC also had a typesetting typewriter, I occupied myself one day making a bit of scripture applicable to the situation.

Get it?  Nescafé -- Nescafehiah?  You'll also notice that Chapter 1, verse 8, has a typo.  Instead of "and in labour they shall skim it," it says "it labour."  So much for inerrancy!

And Chapter 2, verse 2 features a phonetic transcription of the initials SWRC. 

So keep your spoons clean, and check back in on Monday.  See you then!

  

Save Me, Zeitgeist!

From the March, 2002 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, it's a column from their "cultural critic," James Wolcott.

Everything's in black-and-white because this is a photocopy of the article.  The stretches of lost time forbid me from relating why I ain't got the original pages.

Some people like the idea of Jerry Seinfeld piggybacking on Our Hero.  Not me.  Nothing about the alleged comic is entertaining in my opinion.  But this is America!  You can think different!  Hooray!

See you on Thursday.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll agree with me then ...
 

I Wouldn't Call Them "Discards"!

On November 13, 1997, Diagnosis Murder aired an episode chock-full of 1960s secret agents.

Fellow spy maven Wesley Britton discusses "Discards" in depth here.

Here's an interview of the principal guests from the November 8, 1997 TV Guide.

Hard to think that this was all 20+ years ago!  *sigh*  Well, see you Monday, my friends!
 

Welcome to September 1970!

Yes, amongst my many acquisitions from the Bartlesville Bookland (now defunct) was this 1970-71 calendar from the fine folks at Paper Mate.

And, by happy happenstance, 1971's calendar is identical to the days of 2021 ... meaning that, beginning with the opening salvo from September 1970, I can share each month's pages as the time draws nigh -- and they'll match the current calendar!  Yippee!

You can still buy Flairs at Staples and other places.  I need to get more!

You can print out each month and hang 'em on yonder wall of your domicile!

See you on Thursday!
 

Welcome to Metropolis -- National Lampoon Style

From the May, 1991 National Lampoon:

 I really like the ads above.  Who knows if they are legit, or made up by the NatLamp staff!

No comment on the above ads ...

See you on Monday, Super Correspondents!
 

New Year's Speculations for the Year 2000 -- from 1967

In the midst of my excavations for my new blog, Mark's Moon Memories, I discovered a few more fun things in the box.

Note the "potential horrors" in the final paragraphs.  Some have been realized in one way or another.  I don't see any signs of letting the intellectual elite take over -- thank heavens!

And the surrender of personality to drugs and electronic devices is underway, that's for sure!

See you on Thursday!  Until then, put down the device and talk to somebody (no yelling allowed)!
 

Visit My New Blog to Learn About the Race to the Moon!

Yep, this is a proffering of all the hundreds of newspaper and magazine clippings I collected in the late 1960s.

Read all about it in the first post.

And there'll be new posts of a different contemporaneous news item (sometimes many pages at once) over MOON-DAY (get it)?

See you over there every Monday, at Mark's Moon Memories !

See you here (and there!) on Monday, campers!
 

Superman Comic Flies off Shelves!

Yep, if he bleeds, it sells.

Some of us were at the age that we believed what they told us ... NOT a dream, NOT an imaginary story!

The wonderful folks at Planet Comics were "nice" enough to "let" me buy several copies of the Death of Superman run.  A couple of years later I sold one clump of the storyline for $60 (about twice the cover prices).  Believe it or not!

Well, if you can believe me, we'll be back on Monday.
 

Aliens and a Werewolf -- Wowsa!

All of these breathless and absolutely factual tales are from the April 2, 1991 issue of The Sun.

 Who knows, maybe for a while she was a Face on Mars!

Don't you wonder who's gonna pay to dig it out of that basement?

Where wolf?  There wolf!  In them thar woods!

I hope you will remain baffled until something new appears on Thursday ...
 

National Museum of American History Superman Postcards!

As part of their exhibit "Superman: Many Lives, Many Worlds," the National Museum of American History sold some merch.  There was a poster with a Dick Giordano-style Supes superimposed on a bunch of comic-book covers, and these postcards.

See you right back here on Monday, campers!
 

Move Along, There's Nobody Buried There

Yes, Weekly World News digs up the dirt by not digging up JFK!

 Not only was he still alive in 1992, he was mucking about with world leaders!

Just because WWN disappeared from your grocery-store point-of-sale racks in 2007, never fear!  Now it's a digital monstrosity!

Put that in your conspiracy and smoke it.

See you on Thursday for something.