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!

Commemorative BSOH Coin

Hey, look what I got for Christmas from Gunther Demond himself! It's a commemorative Basement Sublet of Horror coin!

 And on the reverse, it's got the BSOH logo!

I don't know how you can get one of these, sadly, unless you know Gunther personally. I hope they make one for Tex LeBeauf next!

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!

Hipsters and Hammett in Redbook, 1933

I picked this up a few years ago in Wichita, the issue of Redbook featuring the first appearance of "The Thin Man." It's a full-length novel, although I don't know if the text is precisely the same as the finished book.

It's right purty, though, ain't it? Sorry about the bottom of the scan, the mag was just too big for the scanner. And here's the back cover:

 PBR! That's all it took to be a Hipster back in '33, just frameless glasses and a white moustache and a three-piece suit and a meat fork! Look at the posers in the mirror, trying to out-hip this guy! They look so self-conscious and defeated!

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!

Go Bust Some Nuts!

Kansas reliably has the best above-the-urinal ads in the nation. Here's one I spotted at Christmastime while micturizing last year at Jimmy's, Wichita's favorite fake-fifties diner:

You can tell it's December because the not-just-a-cop is a Nutcracker!

Then, last month, I spotted this one while relieving myself in a classy wine bar of the type Wichita specializes in:

If your .357 is ruining the lines of your chinos, now you know where to go! 

Hey, look! I'm collecting records!

Filmmaker/journalist/renaissance man Jon Scorfina profiled me for the Riverfront Times's blog and revealed some of the more embarrassing items in my record collection:

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/2010/05/last_collector_standing_scott_phillips_author_ice_harvest_harold_ramis_michael_nyman.php

Wow! Stuff in the mail!

Six days a week I wait for the mail to arrive, expecting something wonderful to materialize in my mailbox, like a puppy or a 1909 S-VDB Lincoln penny. Most days I'm disappointed, even humiliated by the contents of the box. Once in a great while, though, I have one of those big mail days that remind me of those days in my childhood when the newest issue of Jack and Jill arrived with my own name printed on the cover label and there was a dinosaur spread on the back page.

Today I received not one, not two, but three (three!) parcels in the mail, all of which require blog posts. The first was completely unexpected: Mike Coykendall's brilliant CD "The Unbearable Being of Likeness" (Field Hymns, Portland, OR). Mike came out of the fertile Wichita music scene of the '80s, and he produced maybe my favorite record of all time, "MARGARET!" by the Blivets. You need to hear it, and you can do that by going to www.fieldhymns.com.

NEXT: 19th Century Mystery Funeral Procession photos! And after that, Crime Scene and Morgue Photos of a notable 20th century criminal...

"I Wouldn't Come Up Here and Lie to You."

In Wichita Kansas on the night of May 3, 1921, Mortz (Moritz?) Schmidt came home to his wife Mary Francis (Frances?) and threatened her several times with a gun. By 7:30 on the morning of the 4th he was dead, and within two hours his widow was making a statement to the Chief of Police, the Deputy County Attorney, a stenographer and, oddly, a Special Agent for the Rock Island Railroad: (Click to enlarge)

Prohibition was in force at the time, which may account for the fact that no mention is made of alcohol having been consumed, but Schmidt's behavior certainly seems alcohol-fueled.
The opening statement indicates that the couple lived at 417 E. Douglas, but her statement indicates that the address was 417 E. Dewey.


Ambrose Bierce said there are four kinds of murder: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy (a tip of the hat to Craig McDonald). This I would qualify as belonging to the last category. Almost ninety years on the story still feels very modern, thanks perhaps to the stenographer's accuracy in recording Mary Schmidt's distinctive phrasing. I'd love to know what happened to Mary after this. Does anyone know if Deputy County Attorney Sidney Foulston is any relation to recent Wichita DA Nora Foulston?

Silver Naked Lady

Happy New Year. Please click to enlarge this prime example of '30s studio "art" photography. The subject, clad only in g-string, headdress and copious amounts of silver body paint, is one Carella Alden, who I can only assume was a dancer at the time the picture was taken (it's addressed to a certain Aline, a dancer who retired to Wichita to open a dancing school.) All I've been able to determine about Carella is that she was later a successful author of books about Persian, Japanese and early American art, some of them for children. From a Wichita flea market that yielded a number of photographic surprises this December.

Wichita: Nu-Ways and Ghost Signs

Nu-Way is a crumbly beef sandwich that's been a Wichita staple since the thirties. I stopped eating them years ago on trips home because they'd become disgustingly greasy at the suburban franchise outlets, which were also stupid-looking, fake-retro-fifties-diner-hellholes. So when my old pal Brian Curtis and his beautiful wife Mel (too good for him, but that's another post) suggested my brother and I meet them at the original West Wichita location, I thought I'd come along and drink a coffee while the others ate.
But I ended up ordering one anyway. Holy fuck! It was great. Moist but not greasy, made the original way with steam and onions and lean ground beef. Again, Holy fuck, Batman. I inhaled that bastard in the dingy splendor of the somewhat dilapidated building where the thing was invented. Apparently the franchisees decided to go with the greasy version of the sandwich (old-timers inform me that in the old days you could ask for dry or greasy) while the original owners opted for the dry. Here's Brian chewing:

Brian and Mel spent exactly two hours in Wichita; the Nu-Way was their main destination. Long live the Nu-Way.

And here's a lovely ghost sign I shot on the way back to the folks's house:

Kirby's Beer Store

Here's a shot circa 1989 of future Ph.D. Mark Munzinger behind the bar at Kirby's, back in the days when he and Richard Davies owned and operated the place. More to come, including some shots of the obscene men's room graffiti from that long lost era. Click to enlarge and savor the unsavory details.

Boring Postcard

With apologies to the brilliant Martin Parr, who has published several collections of Boring Postcards that are worth checking out. This is a view of Wichita's famed Mid-Continent Airport circa 1970-75. I will try and be more diligent in posting than I have been lately.

Wicked Wichita

I have often been accused of exaggerating for shock effect the randy ambience of my hometown, but here are a couple of pieces of evidence in my favor.

First, here's a shot of the exterior of the old Rector's Bookstore in downtown Wichita, slated shortly for demolition. My old pal Krista D. was kind enough to go down and take this picture for me:

Rector's was the first bookstore I got to know really well. In the seventies it was also the first place I ever saw real porn, in the form of novels like these two gems, from Beeline Books:



(top image via Lynn Munroe Books)

It's hard for me to imagine how old hometown's city fathers allowed this kind of thing to be publicly displayed (this was in the days before dirty book stores opened in town) but I vividly remember bouts of furtive skulking amidst the racks toward the back of the store and devouring short bits of books like "Bondage Wife for Sale" before sweatily slipping them back onto the rack. Ah, adolescence.

The second delightful bit of kink, recently stumbled across, truly boggled my mind:

http://www.wffmunch.com/

If anything like this was around when I still lived there I was sadly unaware of it. Wichita seems like a lot more fun than it was when I lived there.