Sorry for the lack of posts lately. This is my travel week at work. At least once a month I have to travel to some part of the country and remind people why they do business with me. A little less Godfather and a little more Ned Ryerson. (BING!) This week lands me at a trade show in a city known for a rowdy pool hall and an Applebees. Tonight I will commit to a huge post as long as I can escape from clients at a reasonable time without guzzling four 64 ounce beers and my weight in jalapeno poppers.
So, before I slap on the suit and wander around a medical device show for the next six hours, I would like to share some music. It’s seriously spooky music. The kind that is played in the elevator to Hell.
I was watching Insidious last night and couldn’t help but wonder where director James Wan’s inspiration for that blood-curdling violin soundtrack came from? I am taking a wild swing here but I would bet a dozen apples and a moon pie it was inspired by the composer, Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki. If you are unfamiliar, I don’t blame you. I usually do not commit names with eleven constants which are together to memory either. But you are familiar with his composition if you watched films like The Exorcist or The Shining.
The word that I can best describe a lot of his work is shrill. It gets under your skin in a way that could probably lead a person to madness. It builds a tension so thick you honestly can not listen to this in the dark without the feeling a cold dead hand will probably rest on your shoulder.
Listen to the second part of the work, “Cello”, that I have downloaded for your listening pleasure. It’s a mess of insanity but if you are the impatient type and need to get a quick grasp of what I am talking about, skip to 1:20 and listen for thirty seconds. At 1:31 you will get goosebumps. I have never heard sounds like that from instruments. It’s indescribable but it is pure, pure, pure horror.
A long time ago I had the great experience of going to Israel as a soldier for the US Army. It wasn’t for the state of Israel but as a joint training effort and it was very, very short. I actually never talk about it and even my closest family members don’t know of this trip. It was both fun and terrifying and as a young man, I let it shape my very being.
I was on the Lebanese border. I saw real-time death. It was fucking crazy. Eight went and seven came back. Real world shit. (these sentences need to be short.)
But that is not what this is about. This is about Elfie and the awesome Israeli people I was around. They are amazing and this is a great horror-short that exemplifies how amazing, talented and liberal the Israeli people are. I love them and we need to let them know their horror is the type that needs to be shared.
I love this because not only is it an identifiable story it’s so well done. They hit every spacial disorientation from language mixing to basic “did I just do that” confusion. It’s a masterpiece and no one knows it. Or maybe everyone does and I have been sitting on it for years.
Either way, it’s a great story and I am excited to share it with those who don’t know it.
It’s not everyday when you find a place that is made for your little tiny insignificant spot on the internet. For a long time, I didn’t think that place existed. Well, not in this state anyway. But that all changed on Saturday when I had enough of a break from the world of responsibilities to go on a little adventure. I would have no idea what an adventure it would turn out to be.
I took a chance and went to my first flea market and whoa-nelly, what an experience!
Right away I knew this was blog worthy. I wasn’t even past the front door yet and the camera on the phone was primed.
No guns? Okay, I agree with that. No smoking? Sure! NO SNAKES? What kind of place is this?
This place was massive. It was a covered bizarre full of hundreds of venders and millions of oddities. I love this stuff and it was well worth the risk of being beaten with a Vietnamese bamboo shaft for an unwelcome photo moment. I had to be sure the flash was off. This was no place for a mistake like that.
Before I get into the obvious weirdness of a flea market I need to tell you level of people watching was all the way to eleven. Like this guy, for an example. A tough biker dude with gloves and a Harley shirt but has a butt bigger than my Junior year’s English teacher. This guy is clearly living on the edge…by eating Big Macs while riding a motorcycle. That’s talent, my friends.
I’m going to stop being mean now.
So this place exists. Like chocolate and peanut butter, mustard and hotdogs, Jason Vorhees and campers, hiphop and Kung Fu just makes sense. It’s hard to believe that this guy took an idea like this and ran with it but he did and we are all better for it. I didn’t venture inside the cage because I couldn’t see myself actually buying anything and he seemed very intense on the phone. I opted for this photo and to me, that alone is a gift.
This sign speaks the truth! Behind it sits an angry, albeit much smaller, Chinese man who I did not want to cross. Even though his store is mainly old cellphones and video games, he also gives out mean glares. But it seems he does have a sense of humor. I tried to by an iPhone 5 charger and was met with some confusing questions like “You power on for car?” and “I give you two for three!”. At that point smiling, nodding and backing away was my only choice. Then running.
Oh the swords. There were so many swords. Any cutting and stabbing weapon you can imagine was there. The really funny thing was the vendors who sold them. It turns out grandmas know quite a bit about the ways of the samurai. If you ever wanted to be a ninja vigilante, this is your first stop. Talk to Bobby Sue. She’s the one with a cat tattoo on her huge left arm and wearing a number four Talladega race day shirt.
I am always a sucker for Garfield ripoffs, especially when he is trying to eat a jumbo sausage but not before taking a test lick. I appreciate that this wasn’t a total ripoff, though. The artist did leave off his stripes. If there is one thing cats love it’s spicy sausage. Owners do not share this love.
There were so many little spaces like this that had no real organization or way to keep account of what stuff they had. It’s a mystery to me how they sell anything at all. Is this where hoarders buy their junk? Because I can see how they would think their lifestyles are normal if they shop here all the time.
If most of this bizarre was set up this way I would have merely peeked around a bit and called it a day. I hate wasting a Saturday inhaling asbestos when I don’t have to. But lucky for me, around the next corner was a day maker.
What the shit? Is this real life? There is no way a Halloween bakery exists in June. It’s as if God Himself guided me to this place knowing full well I needed blog material and there I stood, looking at cupcakes and Freddy Krueger AT THE SAME TIME! If ever there was a place that embodies VeggieMacabre, this was it.
Everybody was at the party, too! Here we see Pinhead holding his “box of fun” and hinting that the orange limeade is really refreshing. You have to be careful when taking his advice, however. His version of a good limeade has fishhooks at the bottom.
The walls are covered in severed limbs and menacing tools along with occasional macabre news articles. I especially love the skull wreath. During the Halloween season you could actually keep it up through Christmas without the neighbors having a leg to stand on. It is a wreath!
We see here a most excellent Halloween mood table originally coined by Matt of Dinosaur Dracula. A Halloween Mood Table is a hodgepodge of anything that gets you in the Halloween mood. Here we see quite a bit of great stuff but looking closer I am kicking myself for not noticing the Wolfman teeth with a toothbrush conveniently next to it. I could be writing this article wearing Wolfman teeth had I paid closer attention.
As if this place could not be anymore charming, there was even daily horror trivia. AND GOOD TRIVIA TOO! What place can you honestly think of that has a daily question involving a Dario Argento movie? If you can, I will personally learn this dance and film it for a vlog.
So after gushing all over the poor girl who owns this little plot of awesomeness, I had to buy something. The cupcakes with little dinosaurs and aliens on top were cute but I didn’t have an appetite for sweets. It wasn’t the severed heads or dead vampire babies that killed it, I just don’t have much of a sweet tooth. So, I opted for the lemon orange limeade. Not too bad. It had a hint of orange, lemon and lime without fishhooks or ears! B minus.
I like to think that this Pooh receptical has a story to tell. I am most certain he does not belong on a normal trashcan but something to match his top. Perhaps he came from some amusement park years ago only to end up outside of a mexican frozen treat stand in a flea market. It’s kind of sad. I gave him my spooky limeade.
Oh man, it’s the “Make you’re own smell” guy! What a concept! The dude was a character too and no one was safe from harassment when passing by his cube. I don’t think I need to go into his poor choice of a business name because words like “scent” or “essence” didn’t rise to the top of his list.
I bet he is the type who insults people when he means to compliment them. You know, like saying “your face isn’t as fat as it used to be” or something like that. I don’t believe words are his strong point but hopefully making “smells” are.
Not all shops were so strange. This was a killer vintage toy store that was full of some of my favorite childhood memories. Since the show Toy Hunter has been my mandatory Wednesday night watch, I have been fascinated by how much these toys go for. And oddly curious to see how much money I could have made by simply taking care of my stuff. It’s a little sickening.
This place had a ton of stuff from Star Wars to GI Joe to Transformers. What caught my eye the most were the Masters of the Universe line and TMNTs. All of them were unboxed in a giant bin for $3 a piece and the old lady in a wheel chair was bargaining with me for the whole set. I just don’t know enough about toys to buy a huge box of a mishmash of characters. Plus her constant nagging over what I need was a little too reminiscent of this…
I escaped with a future post worthy toy that I will write soon. I love it and soon you will too.
What I thought would be an hour trip turned into three and I still had a long list of real chores to do so I made my way to the exit feeling very fulfilled with my findings for that Saturday. But just before I was about to leave I spotted this..
Do you know what this is? It’s a fully automated embroidering machine. They just type in a word or phrase and the machine will stitch it on to most any article of clothing. And it costs next to nothing! You could write “ALLEN THICKE IS A DICK” on a piece of paper, slide it to the clerk and before you know it, you have a shirt advertising you disdain for the dad on Growing Pains. It’s not magic but it makes me feel magical.
I recently picked up this little gem mainly out curiosity. It’s the movie The Exorcist which is synced to Black Sabbath’s album, “Black Sabbath”. I’ve seen plenty of movies dubbed over with psychedelic music in hipster bars but this was something that peaked my curiosity. I get it mostly, but I never put much stock that the music follows the storyline of the film. Sure we all know the Wizard of Oz/Pink Floyd theory but with a enough weed and low IQ, Pink Floyd could match perfectly to four episodes of Dora the Explorer.
Reading the reviews of De Ville’s musically synched movie, The Ozzorcist, people are generally impressed by how well the lyrics match the scenes. I guess lyrics can be interperated most anyway and Black Sabbath isn’t much of a stretch in relation to a movie that had people believing they were possessed in ’73. To me, this is a match made in Heaven.
Shut up, I have no real jokes anymore.
Here is a quick compilation I made so see what you think?
Holy cats! It’s been a bit since I have done one of these and to be honest, I kind of miss searching out obscure actors that only matter to me and seeing what they are up to today? I hope no one has died since I have been writing these though. I hate editing, as you can tell from hundreds of poorly written posts. So lets light some fires and kick some poodles, it’s time for another fun ride on the ever lasting blog of…
As you can see I am trying to be more creative with my look. Is it working for you? Oh…be quiet.
I am going to start this little gem off with Miguel A. Nunez Jr. because he has always been one of my favorites and whenever I am flipping through the five million channels and I see him, I stop. Even if it happens to be Juwanna Mann.
Miguel has been in a lot of movies and television shows since the early eighties. And when I say a lot, I mean he rivals the IMDb list of guest appearances on Murder She Wrote. But of all these television shows and movies, Miguel had mostly minor roles or at best a secondary character that made only a few episodes as “tough guy #2” or “rough punk” so it seemed he had a bit of a type cast issue until, really, his three-year running with the Vietnam War series, Tour of Duty in the mid-eighties as SGT Marcus Taylor and his starring role as Juwanna Mann in the movie Juwanna Mann. But of all these minor roles he will always be Demon in Friday the 13th: Part 5 and Spider in the ever famous and personal favorite, Return of the Living Dead.
So what is Miguel up to nowadays? To be honest, it looks like he is doing the same thing he has been doing for the past thirty years and that is cranking out roles and minor appearances in television shows with the latest one in 20012. What can you say? The guy’s a pro and clearly one of my all time favorites. Miguel has also produced a few films like Homeboys In Outer Space (not to be confused with his role in leprechaun 4: In Space which he was in too) and even directed a film. Like I said, he’s a pro!
I will say there is no actor out there with a better list of character names. Here are a few:
JoJo, Biscuit, Blackie, Demon, Spider, Sticks, Royal Jackson, Juwanna Man, Chico, C, Delicious, Tiger, Mo Bitches, Maxey Sparks, Goldie, and Jammin’.
While we are on a theme involving Return of the Living Dead, why not include an actor who has helped me annoy anyone around when I watch a ridiculous movie that is “based on a true story” because I tend to yell “YOU MEAN THE MOVIE LIED?!?!”. Thanks to this guy, Thom Mathews, I have had a plenty of guacamole tossed my way.
Thom is an American born actor who I believe was intended to be named Tom but is appears his parents had a lisp. Thom grew up in LA and it seemed natural that a good-looking kid would end up in the Hollywood trade and he had some pretty amazing roles. And by amazing that means I think they are amazing. I also thing hanging tomato gardens are amazing so take that with a grain of salt.
Thom will always be Freddy, the kid who is poisoned with noxious military gas that turns most anything into a brain-craving zombie in the film, Return of the Living Dead and also as an adult Tommy Garvis who is tormented by Jason in Friday the 13th: Part 6. Both roles make him a legend to me. But after that he seemed to just have minor roles like Miguel Nunez Jr through the rest of the eighties, nineties and his latest role was in 2009.
Don’t you dare laugh
Thom is a lot like many horror actors of twenty to thirty years ago and that he appears in horror cons and sci-fi cons, keeping one foot in Hollywood and the other in his private life. In the real world he is the owner of a construction company in California. His looks are still there though a bit more debonair because we guys can age well. (That last sentence was a filler) I am curious to see if he is still best buddies with George Clooney that is boasted on most data sites about him. It seems George is the kind of guy that would forget the people who were there on the way up. Either that or it’s just me hating him.
You know what? Fuck it. Let’s run with this theme since there are soooo many awesome people in Return of the Living Dead. Linnea Quigley is absolutely wonderful for many reasons. The most notable one is her character Trash who fantasizes about being felt-up to death by old men and finally strips into a full nude scene in ROTLD. (Sorry, that became repetitive to type). Little did Trash know that is exactly what would happen to her. It’s an awesome character who annoys her boyfriend, Suicide, into stating another great line, “you think this is a fucking costume? This is a way of life!”. But Linnea had other great characters besides Trash and went on to become quite the “scream queen” of that 80’s horror genre.
Growing up in Davenport, Iowa, she moved to LA in the late 1970’s and quickly started into her sexploitation role by becoming a Playboy Flasher Girl and blending into a horror scream queen character starting with Silent Night, Deadly Night and then ROTLD. After that it seemed her path was clear and some of her films after that were Sorority Babes in the Slimerball Bowl-O-Rama, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Night of the Demons, Blood Church, and Spring Break Massacre. One of my personal favorites is a horror workout video from 1990 and wouldn’t you know it, it’s available on YouTube but I have to warn you it is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!! BE WARNED. But it is awesome.
Well what is the Scream Queen of my dreams up to today?
Well, Quigley is still being awesome and acting as a scream queen. I love that ! In fact she has three films in post-production right now that should be released in DVD format this year (2013). It’s so refreshing to see someone love what they do and still do it well, even though it has been thirty years of screaming and being slashed by chainsaw wielding zombies. It’s truly what I consider a master of their craft. I think I’m in love.
So the green hand is pointing to the great actor, John Philbin, whose character is the nerdy hipster, Chuck, who couldn’t get laid in a female prison with a fist full of pardons. Growing up his role was easily over-looked with so many other prominent characters but as I learn about him as a grownup (take that lightly) I see he was also a pro surfer and I believe on the set he was anything but a nerd.
His list of movie roles are much like the others which are not really a main character but as a co-starring character. ROTLD was not his first horror movie but his second with Children of the Corn coming in just a year before. Fast forward a couple of years later and John got to imitate real life as a surfer in films like North Shore and Point Break. He also was a cowboy in a personal favorite of mine, Tombstone. I think he is killed in the OK Corral shootout but I could be wrong. Wait, or was he hit over the head with a pistol handle by Sam Elliott? Either way, that’s a pretty cool resume boost.
John still acts from time to time and if you pay attention you might see him in a random Law and Order show or an episode of SVU…what ever that means. But the coolest thing is John lives in Pacific Palisades California today and runs a surfing school. He’s doing exactly what he loves and does it well. Oh, and when he was at UC Santa Barbra he was on their surf team. THEY HAVE SURF TEAMS IN COLLEGE??? WHY DID I GO TO MARYLAND?!?!
I think I will end this on a high but low note. Suicide is an iconic punk character in ROTLD and everyone loves him. With classic lines like “You think this is a fuckin’ costume? This is a way of life.” and “Hey, fuck you, ballbuster!”, how can one not? Played by actor Mark Venturini, he was like the missing member of the Misfits. He also, like Thom Mathews, was in Friday the 13th: Part 6 as some psycho who was chopping wood but ends up chopping up a retarded fat kid over a chocolate bar. I really liked that scene. Maybe a bit too much?
Kind of a bummer but there are no current pictures or information about Mark because at the age of 35 he passed away from Leukemia. Way too soon for such a great talent. I hate finding out the death of such a great actor that I have been quoting since I was in high school but that is part of writing “where did they go?”. Sometimes you find out sad news.
Thanks for reading part 17 that ended up having a Return of the Living Dead theme. It wasn’t planned but that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Now go watch it! I am.
Casserole of Disaster 