Is this the Scariest Clown of All Scary Clowns?

At least of all Scary Clowns riding tiny, tiny tricycles.

Just look at this guy!

He's the corpsiest clown ever. Even if you're not scared of clowns, you should be scared of this guy.

Basement Sublet of Horror COMICS!!!!

 In the many months since I last blogged, exciting things have happened. Mostly not to me, but here's one thing with which I was tangentially involved:

 

That's right! The Basement Subvlet of Horror now has its own comic book, written by Gunther Dedmund himself, along with Rik Verlin Livingston, Paul Stockton, Derek McCullough and myself, and illustrated by Livingston, Jeff Kilian and Sy Grudko, along with photos by myself, Kris Hermanson and Gunther himself.

PLUS!

 You also get TWO trading cards with each copy.....

 

Above is one of legendary Wichita Horror Host Tom "The Host" Leahy.....

And this is one of ME!

You can get the first Fab issue from www.basementsubletofhorror.com! And if you like, you can request either of the above cards......

DO IT NOW!

BOOK TOUR 2013!

 Here are the dates, times and places where I'll be shocking young, old and in between: 

Date	Location	Time
6/13	Square Books
	160 Courthouse Square Oxford, MS 38655 662-236-2262	5 p.m.
6/15	Murder by the Book	1 p.m.
	2342 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005 713-524-8597
6/16	Mystery People	7 p.m.
	Noir at the Bar With Jedidiah Ayres and Jesse Sublett for a night of music & noir at Opal Divine's Austin Grill. 3601 South Congress Avenue Austin, TX 78704 512-707-0237
6/18	Nightbird Books	6 p.m.
	205 W Dickson St. Fayetteville AR 72701 479-443-2080
6/19	Watermark Books	7 p.m.
	4701 East Douglas Wichita, KS 67218 316-682-1181
6/20	The Raven BookStore	7 p.m.
	6 East 7th Street Lawrence, KS 66044 785-749-3300

Carole Mallory Exorcises "Picasso's Ghost"

Those of you who know me well know that I don't like the e-tail behemoth named after a certain South American river. But today and today only (this is the third day, I just didn't think of doing this until now, so sue me) you can get my friend Carole Mallory's memoir Picasso's Ghost on your e-reader for free via this link!

http://www.amazon.com/Picassos-Ghost-Love-Story-ebook/dp/B00BEP6R4S

She's a real sweetheart. If Woody Allen's Zelig had been a beautiful woman, she would have been Carole Mallory. Model, actress ("the Stepford Wives," "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"), novelist ("Flash"), now memoirist, she tells the story of her amazing trajectory through Paris, New York and Hollywood, her engagement to Picasso's son Claude, and her liaisons with Peter Sellers, Rod Stewart, De Niro, Mailer and others, as well as encounters with Princess Grace, Jack Nicholson and more. 

If you miss the free e-reader, you can still but it cheap. Or better yet, go order a hard copy from your local independent bookseller!

The Musical Saw

Here's a stereo image I had scanned by a lab because the original image wasn't showing up in my own scans with  the detail I was able to get from a darkroom. I used to see this fellow occasionally around the Centre Pompidou in Paris. One day in the mid-eighties I asked if I could take his picture and he said okay:

It's a nice 3D image, with the saw and the bow making for some nice relief. As I recall, his playing was haunting and lovely, and he was very good-natured about getting his pitcher took.

Finally, the video....

Below is the link to the book trailer for Nocturne le vendredi, which came out November 2 in France. There will be an English version before the book comes out in the US next June. Ideally I will have  rerecorded the voice-over as I did a poor job the first time; this is all the more frustrating because Lane Davies, doing the voice of the psychopathic actor, gives a great performance.

The whole thing was edited by Jenna Marguerita, who also produced and co-directed the scenes with the actors, ably assisted by a group of students from the film department at Webster University. Thanks to them and to Jenna's company, Bitdepth Productions LLC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnGPwYwQXA&feature=autoshare

(p.s.: Click the link above, not the pic below.)

Hatch Show Print in Nashville

Here's the great old neon sign for Hatch Show Print, the legendary letterpress plant:

It's on Broadway in Nashville TN and is famous for having made posters for country music shows, all kinds of stage productions from vaudeville to opera, all with a remarkable flair for snappy design that's always professional but never slick. Here's the showroom:

  Click to enlarge! You'll be glad you did. These small posters are all for sale at quite reasonable prices, and they sell t-shirts too. The people who work there are very friendly (at least the ones who were there the day I went), just make sure you don't let the store cats out when you walk in. Look online at
www.hatchshowprint.org

New Book! And Trailer!

My newest book comes out in France today:

That's my eye on the cover, taken right in my publishers' office. It's part of a series of thirteen novels, all set in Paris and all taking place in part on Friday the 13th. (Nothing to do with the series of horror movies of the same name, although my friend Scott Phillips of New Mexico wrote a Jason tie-in novel a few years back, so this is really going to confuse the shit out of people.)

Three of the novels are already being turned into TV movies, and I'm hoping this will be the fourth. It's loosely based on a period in the early nineties when my friend Lane Davies and I were running around Paris trying to raise money for a movie. Lane was the star of a soap opera, "Santa Barbara," that was broadcast with great success during prime time in France, and was such a celebrity there that we were certain we could get this thing made. We didn't but hijinks ensued and when les Éditions la Branche asked me to write something for the series I asked Lane if he'd object to me depicting him as a murdering psychopath (in the novel, things go slightly more haywire than they did in real life).

Hell, no, I don't mind, he replied, can I play myself in the TV movie?

We just got done shooting a book trailer and are just starting to edit. Here's a shot of one of the sets, showing tireless cinematographer/editor Jenna Marguerita with indefatiguable grips Tony and Nathan, and seated at the bar, Anita Romero, playing Esmée, the femme fatale:

And here's the lovely Anita in character:

The book will be out in July of 2013 from Counterpoint Books under the title "RAKE," with one of the best covers I've ever had. Until then, you can get the French version here: http://www.furet.com/nocturne-le-vendredi-2084107.html

Fire Eater

This guy was a regular fixture around the Centre Pompidou in the eighties and early nineties. He was a fire eater, and he also had a repulsive specialty: he could suck his abdominal organs upward until you could damn near see his spine sticking through the skin of his belly (no, I didn't get a picture.) He was French and I believe he'd been a paratrooper (note the tattoo on his biceps) and he was quite gracious about having his picture taken.

This was originally half of a stereograph pair. Until I started cleaning the dust off of this negative digitally I hadn't ever noticed the burn scars on his arms, back and sides.

Scandal!

In the late fifties, "Confidential" was the magazine that named the names and dished the dirt. I'd read a book about the magazine's tumultuous legal history (they got sued a lot) but I'd never seen a copy.

 That's Lana Turner on the bottom!

 Look! Edward R. Murrow had a missing tooth! And there's another one of Liz Taylor's husbands!

Queer Shenanigans! Reducing Pills! Louella Parsons! Man. Those were the days.

Ernest Tubbs's Record Shop, Nashville

 Ernest Tubb had a record shop on Broadway in Nashville Tennessee. It's still there! Here are some clothes that belonged to Ernest and his singing pals:

 Pete Drake's amplifier! And a Nudie Suit belonging to Texas Troubador (Ernest's band) Jack Drake!

Holy Moley! Pete Drake's talking steel guitar itself!
Dig the standup cutout of Marty Stuart, rocking his own Nudie Jacket and holey blue jeans! Lots of memorabilia and a great selection of CDs. I got a Connie Smith, a Rockabilly compilation with lots of great obscure tracks and--are you ready for this? A Stringbean CD. When in Nashville, go check it out and buy some music.

Two-Dimensional Celebrities

 More treasures from the Pink Elephant! Above, the King. Below, Cher, even more weathered than the real one.

The elephant has been repainted since this pic was taken. That is all.

Major Astro, circa 1970

In Wichita we had several memorable kiddie show hosts (Cap'n Bill, played by Bill MacLain, Freddie Fudd, supposedly Elmer's cousin, played by Henry Harvey) but none loomed as large in our little cartoon-addled minds as Channel Three's Major Astro, played by Tom Leahy, who also served as The Host on KARD's late-night horror movie show "Nightmare" (the prime inspiration for Joel Sanderson's brilliant "Basement Sublet of Horror").

 The show began in the days of the Mercury program, but as you can see by the Moonbase set above, it was still running well into the Apollo years.

 Here the Major waves, looking like he's giving his signature sign-off line, "Happy orbits, boys and girls!" I met Tom once when my friend Jeff Killian interviewed him in his home, and I was running one of two video cameras. In the interview, Tom was very, very funny, (he referred to the character as "The Maj") and afterwards he invited us to have a drink with him. Jeff and the other cameraman demurred, as it was before noon, but I wasn't by God going to pass up the chance to have a snort with Major Astro. He gave me a glass of white wine and said "I believe I'll have something stronger myself." Then he poured himself a good-sized tumbler of scotch.

The viewing screen behind him to his left is where the cartoons would first appear before going full-screen.  I believe Jeff gave me these pictures in the late eighties to print; I just found them in a box of old slides. Most likely they came from The Maj himself. Tom died a year or two ago, mourned by thousands of Wichita's former kiddie-show viewers. Rest in Peace, Maj!

Ventriloquism

Did you know that the adjective relating to ventriloquism is "ventriloquial?" Which as a child I mispronounced adorably as "ven-tril-o-quo-yal." I had the notion at one point that I wanted to be a ventriloquist. My parents wouldn't let me have a dummy, though, and no one really wants to see a ventriloquist talking with his empty hand.  So here's a Jerry Mahoney dummy I found:
 
Here's something I bet you didn't know: Paul Winchell, Jerry Mahoney's creator and manipulator and vocal source, also co-invented one of the first artificial hearts with Dr. Henry Heimlich, of Maneuvering fame.

Jake's Wake/Kirby's Reunion!

Last weekend in Wichita some friends organized a reunion of the grizzled sots and wised-up former grifters who hung around in Kirby's back in the 8-0s and early 90s. Unfortunately the thing turned into a wake for uber-regular and comic genius Jake Euker, who died earlier in the week. Nonetheless a good time was had, as they say, by all, and in the best tradition of wakes many Jake stories were told and many glasses lifted.
Without naming names:

 Standing outside in the grand parking lot tradition.

 Who is this sultry, leering temptress?

 Someone looks surprised! Perhaps an "off color" remark?

Music! Featuring on vocals a young lady whose parents were regulars before she was even born. Proud papa is on sax at left.

This guy's laughing because he doesn't own the place any more.

For a view of the place in those long-gone, halcyon days, see: http://pocketfulofginch.blogspot.com/2010/03/kirbys-88.html
More to come!

Another Film Noir Poster from Belgium

This one's for another "White Slavery" picture. Both titles translate as "Slaves for Rio."
The English title is "They Were So Young," and the story centers on a Rio modeling agency that's a front for a call-girl ring. And it's got Raymond Burr! He plays "Jaime Coltos."

How Times Change

It used to be you had to look far and wide and go into some pretty seedy places to get this kind of material under the counter. Now they're stocking it at suburban retail establishments for all to see.

What a great age we live in!

"Happy Birthday, Mr. President, Versions One and Two"

Two images from the Pink Elephant Antique Mall about an hour north of where I live, both of them taken because they remind me of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mister President." (Can't post the original copyrighted images, but look them up on Google, the ones taken from behind while she's at the podium.)

 

The above image I shot a week or so ago....

 

And the Furry version comes from a couple of years back. It's an elephant costume, which is of course less evident when seen from behind. 

Popeye Impersonator in Brussels

This guy was a street performer in, I think, Brussels in the mid-to-late '80s. (I'm guessing Brussels based on other shots on the same roll.)
As you can see, he drew quite a crowd, but I can't remember any particular shtick he had apart from "Look at me, I look like Popeye the Sailor Man."

He made that shtick his own, though....except for that damned pony tail! Bluto would have yanked on that shit and sent poor old Popeye into orbit.

Two Mexican Film Posters from the 50s

 The first one, "el Ciclòn del Caribe," seems to be a musical. Click on it and savor its full-size garish glory.

(I don't know why the lady is green!)

 The second, "Trotacalles," seems to be about streetwalkers (Spanish speakers, am I translating "Trotacalles" correctly?) Unfortunately it's in pretty bad shape and  it may be past salvaging. The artist's name is Vargas and I'm told he was a very prominent figure among the Mexican artists painting movie posters back in the day.