terebi funhouse

dilly dreem

2012-01-21T10:19:00.001-08:00

Here's a fine selection of DILLY DREEM pages from the pages of SCHOOL FRIEND, circa 1961.

thrift store LP records for the vinyl seeker

2011-10-26T11:27:00.000-07:00

So you heard vinyl is the hot new fad and you bought a turntable and now you want some records to play on it. But what's a fair price for an old LP that isn't particularly collectible? Whatever Goodwill sells it for. $2, $3 maybe, if it's one of those upscale stores that thinks everything's a collector's item. Hell, the record store in Peterborough we were at recently (open 24 hours, METALLIC K.O. on the store system) has a ton of LPs for fifty cents each or as many as you can carry for five dollars. But seriously, here are some artists whose entire catalog you can find for less than two bucks each.

Billy Joel - From "Record Where He's Throwing Stone At Greenhouse" to "Record where he's standing on sidewalk", his entire catalog is in every thrift store in the world. Tell her about it!!

Genesis. Duke, Lamb Lies Down, Abadabacaba, their self-titled LP, it's all there in the thrift. Also Phil Collins solo albums. Can you feel it in the air tonight?

Supertramp, "Breakfast In America". I've seen crazy grandmas trying to sell this for ten, twenty bucks, but your local Salvation Army has it for one dollar.

Styx - Pieces Of Eight, Crystal Ball, Paradise Theater, even Kilroy Was Here, it's all in the thrift. Keep your eyes open for their early pre-Tommy Shaw Wooden Nickel releases STYX and STYX II.

I know Elton John has a wide catalog, but much of it is right there in your local thrift store including Captain Fantastic, the record whose sleeve disturbed me as a child, don't ask me why.

It goes without saying that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass will have a representative sampling of LPs in any collection of cast off records, including "Whipped Cream And Other Delights". If you need fifty thousand copies of that record, just go to any thrift store.

I know what you're saying, who the hell is Nana Mouskouri? Well, I don't know either, but somebody up here bought the hell out of her records because there is not one thrift store in Canada without a freakin' Nana Mouskouri record in it. Usually two or three.

Same deal with James Last. Holy cow could this guy make records that people would want to get rid of in a big way. In fact when I see the James Last LP in the thrift store, that's my signal to quit and go look at electronics.

Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors". NEVER PAY MORE THAN A DOLLAR FOR THIS RECORD. It's everywhere. I hardly ever see "Tusk", though.

If you ever need any kind of Christmas music for any reason whatsoever, your local thrift store has lots and lots and lots and lots of Christmas music.

Chicago. They made a lot of records, and I know this because they all got donated to Goodwill.

Bee Gees - the "Saturday Night Fever" LPs have largely disappeared thanks to kitschy 70s nostalgia, but their "Main Course" record always shows up. If you look closely it has a naked woman on the cover!

Toronto. Not the city, but the band, who apparently gave a copy of one of their LPs to every citizen of Toronto, who said "thanks!" and then gave them to the Salvation Army.

Max Bygreaves - singalongamax - this British fellow is something like Mitch Miller, a genial host who encourages people to sing along with him. He made fifty or sixty million different LPs and I've seen all of them in thrifts here in Ontario and in the States.

My Fair Lady - the Rex Harrision/Julie Andrews cast recording with the Hirschfeld cover. Everybody loves the Hirschfeld, apparently, I see this record everywhere.

Eagles - this popular country-rock combo was so hate-filled at the end of their "The Long Run" tour that they weren't speaking to each other except in curses. And you can buy all their albums at the thrift store now for pennies on the dollar! Take it easy, desperado! Christ, I hate the Eagles.

Bing Crosby's Christmas Albums. Apparently he quit hitting his kids long enough to cut this Christmas LP of which one awaits you at the Goodwill.

AC/DC - If you need "Back In Black" or "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" then you can't get much cheaper than your local thrift. Because they are there.

Loggins & Messina - if you wanted to hear what Kenny Loggins sounded like before he took that highway to the danger zone, look no further than Goodwill.

Carole King - "Tapestry". I think thrift stores find these LPs lying on the ground when they open for business.

Star Castle. Who were they? What did they sound like? I have no idea. But their LPs are everywhere.

The Knack "Get The Knack". You'd think hipsters would have snapped all these up, but you'd be wrong.

Beatles - they sold a hundred zillion records but people kept most of them. In fact people buy them over and over again in different formats. The only Beatles LPs I see in thrifts are the "1962-1966" and "1967-1970" compilations. And every record Wings ever made, they're all in the thrift.

Kingston Trio - they're still trapped on the MTA, and in the thrift. You'd think these early 60s folk LPs would be worth something, but you'd be wrong.

Monkees - you can still pick up their first two LPs in the thrifts for very little cash. Their later, less scripted records are harder to find, but occasionally turn up. I never see solo Mike Nesmith LPs, though I did find the "Dolez, Jones, Boyce & Hart" LP, which is an oddity, let me tell you.

Moody Blues - whichever one has "Nights In White Satin" on it, the sleeve looks like a classical LP. Never pay more than a dollar for it. In fact I will pay you a dollar to not have to ever hear "Nights In White Satin" again. Apparently the "mono" version of this LP is worth big bucks, though.

Classical LPs - they're all there. Everything. Take them, just take 'em.

Carpenters - if you never need a Carpenters LP, Goodwill has 'em.

Boz Scaggs - that record where he's sitting on the bench! They have lots.

still clogging up the bins - Frampton Comes Alive! Can you feel like I do?

Cheap Trick - I see "Live At Budokan" with the occasional "Dream Police". Both are worth having especially for a buck each.

Bobby Sherman - he's still got it! "It" being "lots of records people didn't keep."

Rolling Stones - apart from the occasional 80s release like "Tattoo You" which everybody agrees isn't really worth having, not a lot of Stones in the thrifts.

Heart. Usually two or three Heart LPs in the pile.

Children's records. Of all kinds and shapes and sizes. Disney, Peter Pan, Sesame Street, Smurfs, Strawberry Shortcake, whatever label had children's records, they wind up in the thrift store. The Smurfs made a lot of records. Sometimes this intersects with...

Religious records. Jimmy Swaggart sermons, Tammy Faye sings, gospel quartets, gospel bluegrass quartets, hymns, children's religious songs, it can all be yours for pennies on the dollar.

Jim Nabors. Gomer cut a lot of albums of his operatic baritone style singing. I mean a LOT of records. You will see the first one and think it's kinda funny, and then you'll see the second one and the third one and so on, and then you realize that somebody out there was buying these things.

Bins full of the same 12" rap single. Local talent got together with local producer and cut a rap record! And it went straight to Goodwill, who got boxes and boxes and boxes of "Boomp (Street wit 2 EZ)" by DJ Zipadeh Doodah and Professor Murder, or whoever.

I see Michael Jackson's OFF THE WALL sometimes, but people held on to THRILLER. I hardly ever see Jackson 5 LPs.

All of the Osmonds' work is at the thrift. Donny, Marie, and the rest, they're all there. If you've been itching to hear Marie sing "Paper Roses", get to the Sally.

Melanie. Apparently there was a singer named Melanie and she cut some records, and they are disproportionately represented in our thrift stores.

Sing Along With Mrs. Mills! Let's Have A Party With Mrs. Mills! Somebody Tell Mrs. Mills To Go Home! Before Susan Boyle, the UK's middle-aged housefrau crooning needs were represented by Mrs. Mills and her hearty anthems. Who would buy this record? And why?

Jackson Browne. The Pretender. All over the thrifts.

Seals & Crofts. Who are they? What did they do? Did they croft seals? Who knows? Lots of albums from these kings of Yacht Rock in the thrifts. SUMMER BREEZE MAKES YOU FEEL FINE BLOWIN' IN THE JASMINE IN THE BACK OF THE GOODWILL.

Grand Funk Railroad. Was it THESE guys who had the cover where they're all cavemen? That's the guys I'm thinking of. All you want for a dollar each.

If you look at the cassettes you'll notice that the selection of music moves from 60s-70s to late 70s'-80s-90s. I hardly ever look at cassettes, which is stupid of me because a lot of really weird stuff shows up on cassette in thrift stores. But I don't know if there are any acts that show up everywhere the way Herb Alpert does on LP. CDs are usually empty cases, free AOL discs, computer software from 1996, or record company compilation giveaways.

Ethnic music. Hungarian folk songs, Russian folk songs, Ukrainian folk songs, Polish folk songs, German drinking songs. Electronic European dance tunes. Chinese traditional songs. Voodoo drums from Haiti. The ethnic makeup of the neighborhood matters, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. But every thrift has a good selection of weird foreign tunes from 'the old country.'

CANADA ONLY: Up here the thrifts are full of LPs that you don't find in the States. Mostly albums by Prism, whose anthem "Spaceship Superstar" is a classic of cheesy space rock. Also Canada's number-one good time party band Trooper, I see a lot of their albums in the thrift bins. Never seen a Prism record south of the border, though. I have seen Rush LPs in both nations, but the percentage here is higher.

I'll be honest, the chances of finding anything 'really good' in the thrift stores get smaller every day; professionals are out there culling the herd daily to try and sell to hipsters in Queen West stores at two thousand percent markups. The days of finding entire Ramones catalogs for $1 each in the Salvation Army are long gone. But if you do kill some time flipping through their albums hoping for a score, remember that you'll be spending a lot of time with Mr. Herb Alpert.

more crazy grandma price guide action

2011-10-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

Crazy Grandma Price Guide report, Jan. '10

Tread lightly, pilgrims... watch your head... LOOK OUT!! IT'S THE CRAZY GRANDMA COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE IN ACTION!!!

How much are you willing to pay for that copy of TUFF GHOSTS STARRING SPOOKY? Five dollars? Ten dollars? TWENTY DOLLARS? Think again, my pretty! Heh heh eh heh heh cough COUGH HACK COUGH OH JESUS PANT PANT pant.

Not ten or twenty or thirty or thirty-five - but forty whole dollars! Captured by the digital camera of intrepid explorers Shain and Dave as they delve deep, thrusting uncomfortably to penetrate the mysteries lurking within the caves - the CREEPY FREUDIAN CAVES starring HOT STUFF - of the World 'O Crazy Grandma Price Guide. You should probably go wash your hands now.

This was shot on Day One of this year's Xmas Odyssey at, obviously, the "L&K Antiques Mall" which is located on the 401 east of Windsor Ontario, north of Leamington (the Tomato Capital of Ontario) and somewhere within about a half-hour drive of Colasanti's Tropical Gardens, a farmer's market/roast chicken buffet/lawn and patio decor/petting zoo/tourist trap sort of place that's worth a stop if the weather's nice and you don't have anywhere in particular you need to be.

Other highlights of Day One of our trip include, um, getting gas, the US Customs guy being all attitudinal because the passports were not offered to him together in one simple motion, and being stopped by the Olympic Torch as it passed us in Windsor. And dinner at Bob Evans in Dayton and stopping for the night somewhere north of Louisville KY. Where Dave and Shain go, excitement follows!11!1!!! Can you feel it?

crazy grandma price guide part 345

2011-10-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

We spend way too much time digging through sedimentary layers of pop culture in search of kitsch and other treasures. After a while you begin to notice patterns of behavior, one of which is the tendency of antique-mall and market sellers to overprice their comics to an alarming degree. We were once told by a grandma that the coverless Charlton horror comics we were browsing "booked at eight dollars each". What book would that be? The question answers itself: the Crazy Grandma Comic Book Price Guide.

MARCH 2010:

Went out in the rain yesterday to see some crazy grandma prices. And did we!

Terrible ninja comic by white people from the black and white boom of the 80s? Sure. I'll give you fifty cents or a dollar for it. NO WAIT

"That'll be TEN DOLLARS PLEASE," said in your best wavery grandma voice. "My grandson needs a new game tape for his thingamabob." Okay, sure, fine, but what about Archie digests?

These were printed in the tens of thousands, distributed around the world, surely THEY must be priced reasonably.

Nossir. Not ONE dollar, not EIGHT dollars, but EIGHTEEN WHOLE DOLLARS for an Archie digest from the 1980s. This is a collector's item! They only printed fifty thousand of these! It's occupying a valuable space in the corner of this shelf and if I sold any of these Archie digests - of which I have an entire box, priced from $10 on up - I might have to fill the space with some other equally valuable piece of junk, er I mean memorabilia, that I would have to haul out of my storage unit which is undoubtedly filled with valuable junk, I mean, memorabilia! Anyway if I sold any of this memorabilia then it would leave a big aching hole in my crazy grandma life - which is already pretty empty on account of me being a crazy grandma!

But it's not all oldsters with inflated senses of the worth of their junk out there in the sticks. Sometimes you see copyright infringment.

Don't tell United Features Syndicate but there's a golf center out in Ontario - and I won't tell you the name of the town, but THERE'S A PEANUTS CHARACTER WITH THE SAME NAME - which is just flaunting copyright like crazy! The sign has been up there for a good 20 years too, so it's a cinch THERE'S SOME KIND OF COVERUP GOING ON HERE.

We also found a picnic tray with suspiciously Dave Berg type artwork.

I dug through a lot of old Mads trying to find some evidence of swiping, but in general it has a vague early 1960s Dave Berg look without actually tracing anything from Dave Berg. Even Ponytail Woman Of 1960, though very similar to a character that appeared in "The Lighter Side Of Picnics", is not a direct swipe.

(Hint: "You're eating the stick.") Clamdiggers (or are those pedal pushers?) from the Laura Petrie collection.

boris karloff

2011-07-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

christmas in july

2011-07-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

atlantis the lost review

2011-06-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

This review of Disney’s ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE was written upon the film’s release in 2001 and originally appeared on the website Anime Jump.

Some anime fans are taking a page out of the “Lion King” handbook and crying “ripoff” at Disney’s film ATLANTIS, claiming similarities between it and the 1989 Gainax series NADIA: SECRET OF BLUE WATER. However, fact is ATLANTIS has about as much to do with NADIA as it would have to do with ANY series dealing with Finding Lost Atlantis Under The Sea. Okay, there is a blue healing gem plot device thing, that’s a pretty direct swipe. But otherwise forget it. ATLANTIS doesn’t even have Captain Nemo in it, and there isn’t any of that business of secret agents and conspirators running around the surface world that seems to be in ALL these lost undersea empire films - check out Atragon or Latitude Zero sometime.

The real problem is that ATLANTIS is an oddity even among modern Disney films. It’s a throwback to the Bad Days, an atavistic relic from the days before The Mouse learned how to make animated films that appealed to modern audiences. In other words, this movie is VERY 1980s.

The figure animation is full of over-expressive facial contortions and that flippety-floppy crap Don Bluth used to use to hide his lack of ideas. There are a lot of old people and dark greys and browns, and a cat straight out of OLIVER&CO. or FOX AND THE HOUND or some other dank resume-filler. The character designs themselves are by themselves fine, but no two of them look as if they belong in the same film. Most studios hire a guy, ONE guy, to design characters and keep the look consistent, but not ATLANTIS, where one person’s traditional Disney and another person looks like an Aeon Flux extra and another one is a graffitti caricature.

And while I’m on the subject of characters; ATLANTIS shows Disney taking a bold step into the 1980s by including a racially mixed cast of adventures, all of whom are painful caricatures, if not outright stereotypes (the French guy doesn’t bathe! Isn’t that FUNNY?!), all of whom turn out to be brave, stalwart, and true. Except of course for the two white Americans, who are evil and die horribly. Sure, the hero is a white guy, but he’s a nerd, so he doesn’t count.

Do you think the Disney animators are kinda working out some high school traumas when they give us a dramatic climax featuring a big, tough, alpha-male military guy beating up on a skinny, pale, bespectacled weenie-boy? I do.

I would say something about the Atlantean princess, whatever her name is, only the most charitable thing I can think of to say is that she probably won’t be joining the ranks of Famous Disney Princesses any time soon. Blue hair, head consistently drawn too large, and has a blue gem that heals wounds, except when it’s not convenient to the plot. Oh, and apparently she’s eight thousand years old. Which leads me to question exactly what the deal is with the city of Atlantis. Atlantean crowd scenes are carefully orchestrated to show as many cute little toddler Atlanteans as possible, because they’re that kind of perfect, untroubled by evil capitalistic Western society-culture that automatically has lots of smiling children around. So it begs the question, if the Atlanteans never die, but can have children, how come in the eight thousand years they’ve been on the bottom of the ocean they haven’t overpopulated themselves into complete extinction? Maybe the toddlers are eight thousand years old too and nobody ever ages. How’d you like to be that kid’s mom - changing eight thousand years worth of diapers? Now THAT’S what I call paradise, for some kind of sick freaking diaper fetishist, maybe, but not for me, thanks.

I think they’re cannibals, that’s what they are. Either that or they have some sort of Logan’s Run public execution type deal going on. Closed society, folks - something’s gotta give SOMEWHERE.

Actually this is the kind of film where stuff just happens, where every plot element falls through if you give it a moment’s thought, where the evil mercenaries get their comeuppance but the guy who HIRES the evil mercenaries is somehow still a good guy, where the only reason something is mentioned or shown is to make sure you remember it when it becomes convenient to the plot.

With none of the witty banter or pop-culture gags that have made recent Disney films so watchable, it’s obvious that this film is their attempt to ‘catch up’ with Japanese animation. The script, by Hollywood veteran Tab Murphy -best known among fans for his abortive scripts for WATCHMEN and STAR BLAZERS - never strays far from familiar territory. If you've ever seen a Doug McClure film and then watched a Japanese cartoon, you've seen ATLANTIS. “We’ll give ‘em flashy effects, chicks with blue hair, big machines, and a plot you could drive trucks through! They’ll love it!” they said. And this would have worked… in 1987. If they’d released this film fourteen years ago the Mouse would be where the Japanese are now - producing entertaining and innovative works that set new standards in animation. As it is, ATLANTIS is a day late and a dollar short. Instead of having Mike Mignola work on mechanical designs – which are great - , they should have just given him all the money for a HELLBOY feature. (Which somebody did, a few years later, and it was a big hit. Dave wins again!) – ed.

That’s not to say this film is a complete washout. It’s one of the few Disney films where the “funny” supporting cast is actually funny. Hiring comedians like Don Novello, who’s easily the most memorable character in the film, is a trend that should continue. The meat-and-potatoes mechanical stuff is gutsy and shows a lot of promise - the second quarter of the film is mostly submarines battling giant robot lobsters and mechanical moles digging in the bowels of the Earth, that sort of thing, and the movie shows it can handle this material with the best of them. Plus - and I cannot emphasize this enough - there are NO funny animal sidekicks and NO songs, which gets a few points in my book.

Still, there’s a big chunk of soul missing from the center of ATLANTIS. It’s ultimately a cynical and heartless film made up of bits and pieces of other films. Don’t believe me? This movie has a CITIZEN KANE swipe in it, okay? It’s an exercise in beating the Japanese that, like Disney’s OTHER summer “blockbuster” PEARL HARBOR, does the most damage to itself.

consumer electronics price war

2011-04-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we were out in the hinterlands and hey, there's a familiar sight:

A RCA Selectavision video disc player, AKA a "CED" player. CED stands for "Capacitance Electronic Disc" and was a home video format that flared up briefly in the early 1980s, much like a rash or some kind of epidemic. I bought mine at a pawn shop for five bucks and have had it ever since, enjoying the wide assortment of pan and scan feature films that litter the landscape of junk shops and flea markets at widely varying price points. It's a technological curiosity but quite useless these days; most films are available in other formats that are much better looking and much more convenient.

One thing the RCA Selectavision is NOT, is a laserdisc player.

But don't tell that to the crazy grandmas who price things at antique malls, who seem to think this useless boat anchor is worth fifty-five dollars. Good luck with that, chief.

On the other hand we did see this crazy looking rabbit!

Sure, $25 is probably too much for it, but it sure is crazy lookin'. Maybe HE priced that Selectavision.

(objects were seen at Market Road Antiques and the St. Jacobs Antiques Market, both in St. Jacobs.)

back home

2010-11-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Shain got me a copy of Bill Mauldin's BACK HOME at a vintage shop on Queen a few weeks back - well, another copy, really. I've had a beat-up paperback for a while, but this one's hardback, I want to say first printing 1947. This is the book he wrote after UP FRONT, after he got out of the Army a decorated wonder-boy with cartooning talent, lots of press attention, a fat bank roll, and more than a hundred papers running his strip. After a year or so, it was all gone but the talent, thanks to the combination of the public's fickle attention being distracted from returning servicemen, and Mauldin's prodigious gift for getting into scraps.

Anyway there are a lot of great cartoons in the book, most of which haven't been reprinted anywhere else; the Fantagraphics Mauldin set is swell but obviously most of these strips are outside their purview. You can see his work kind of start to tighten up once he gets back to the States - particularly anything involving women, which obviously he hadn't had a lot of practice drawing in the past five years - but a lot of the strips aren't as clumsy as I remembered. And now that I have a hardback copy I can share.

This is what I love about his work - his ability to suggest mass with nothing more than silhouette, the casual, dashed-off nature of his line that gives you the wrinkles, the shapes, and the human form in a confident way.

I don't think this one's as successful - there's something fakey about the guard, hard to tell if they're statues or human beings - but the two walking figures have that great looseness, all wrinkles and loopy brush strokes.

Always a sucker for cartoons that show Hitler and top Nazis burning in Hell, and this one's no exception. Great dramatic low-angle lighting on all the figures, and Goebbels squatting like a little rat is perfect.

This one isn't as dark as the others - it's a cartoon about the terrible state of cars in the immediate postwar period - but look at the great way he works that streetlight, the shading on the cab continues with that circular motion, it's terrific. Looks like it took him about two minutes, tops. I love the way the giant black spaces aren't completely spotted, either. You get a sense that there's actually a building there.

Mauldin actually gave up cartooning for a while, but once the 50s really got going he was back in the game, would rack up another Pulitzer. An American original.

little dot

2010-06-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

House ad from Harvey 3-D comic.

crazy grandma comic book price guide

2010-04-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

Tread lightly, pilgrims... watch your head... LOOK OUT!! IT'S THE CRAZY GRANDMA COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE IN ACTION!!!

How much are you willing to pay for that copy of TUFF GHOSTS STARRING SPOOKY? Five dollars? Ten dollars? TWENTY DOLLARS? Think again, my pretty! Heh heh eh heh heh cough COUGH HACK COUGH OH JESUS PANT PANT pant.

Not ten or twenty or thirty or thirty-five - but forty whole dollars! Captured by the digital camera of intrepid explorers Shain and Dave as they delve deep, thrusting uncomfortably to penetrate the mysteries lurking within the caves - the CREEPY FREUDIAN CAVES starring HOT STUFF - of the World 'O Crazy Grandma Price Guide. You should probably go wash your hands now.

This was shot on Day One of this year's Xmas Odyssey at, obviously, the "L&K Antiques Mall" which is located on the 401 east of Windsor Ontario, north of Leamington (the Tomato Capital of Ontario) and somewhere within about a half-hour drive of Colasanti's Tropical Gardens, a farmer's market/roast chicken buffet/lawn and patio decor/petting zoo/tourist trap sort of place that's worth a stop if the weather's nice and you don't have anywhere in particular you need to be.

Other highlights of Day One of our trip include, um, getting gas, the US Customs guy being all attitudinal because the passports were not offered to him together in one simple motion, and being stopped by the Olympic Torch as it passed us in Windsor. And dinner at Bob Evans in Dayton and stopping for the night somewhere north of Louisville KY. Where Dave and Shain go, excitement follows!11!1!!! Can you feel it?

sketchbook

2008-09-01T17:47:00.000-07:00

russian

2008-08-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

the gospel of the farting preacher

2007-06-12T15:15:00.002-07:00

(originally published on the Anime Hell blog, May 2007)

Robert Tilton is the once and future king of the post-Jim & Tammy Implosion era of slick TV evangelists; hounded and humiliated huckster of holy water, prayer cloths, and inspirational books; and flatulent, fraudulent star of what may be the original "viral video".

As host of the long-running "Success-N-Life" television program, Tilton preaches a "prosperity" gospel that promises to enrich its flock with God-ordained good fortune with Jesus as sugar daddy/investment counselor/loanshark/bookie. Since the key part of this gospel - 'sowing the seed'- means sending Tilton one thousand dollars, the only person this gospel has ever made wealthy is Robert Tilton himself. His sermons aren't about sin, death, or salvation - they're about making a vow (to send Tilton cash) and keeping your promise (to send Tilton cash), interrupted only by frequent, Tourettes-style bursts of "speaking in tongues". After being investigated by ABC's Prime Time Live, the Texas Attorney General's office, and the FBI, Tilton vanished from the airwaves, but after a few years of laying low he returned- tanned, rested and ready- shooting a new series of inspirational infomercials from a classy new studio in Florida, which you can catch late at night on places like BET.

Where did this slick-talking holy-oil salesman come from? Texas, of course. A college dropout and real estate salesman, in the early 70s Tilton latched onto both Jesus and the teachings of Tulsa evangelist Billy James Hargis. Hargis was the first to combine the fire of holy-rollering with the technosavvy of mail order marketing, and his mailings went out to three million homes at their peak. Tilton's TV show "Success-N-Life" began in 1984 and at its peak reached more than 200 stations - a one-hour informercial designed to get people to phone in pledges and mail him checks. In return Tilton would bless coins, pray over napkins, place prayer cords into a miracle wall of prayer, and generally use every pagan voodoo trick at his disposal to convince Jesus and God that little old you needs $1500 for a new transmission. Trouble for Tilton came when word got out that prayer requests sent to "Success-N-Life" were winding up in the garbage, when dead people were recieving letters promising Tilton's healing hand in exchange for cold cash, when a Tilton anti-Semitic rant was secretly caught on tape... when the level of disgusting excess and outright fraud became too much for even the strong stomach of the Dallas evangelical community.

But it's as an ironic touchstone for disaffected youth that Tilton may have his greatest success. The hopped-up, gibbering spectacle of Brother Bob pounding his desk, ranting in "otoyo basoya" tongues, and, quick as a wink, shifting gears to a dewy-eyed patriarch deeply moved by the suffering of humanity - well, if that isn't good television I don't know what is. Hipsters, pop culture junkies, kitsch connossieurs and po-mo pontificators all found "Success-N-Life" a terrific late-night watch, funnier than that OTHER "SNL" by far. Daniel "Art School Confidential" Clowes devoted a whole page of his groundbreaking "Eightball" comic to highlight Tilton. There was even a "Love That Bob" night at Club Dada in Dallas, sponsored by the Robert Tilton Fan Club, and a fanzine entitled "The Beast Of Robert Tilton". But it was through home video that Tilton would reach his greatest non-sucker audience.

The "Farting Tilton" tape, also known as "Joyful Noise", "Farting Evangelist", "Fart Preacher", etc., is mentioned in the press clipping for the "Love That Bob" Club Dada night (Jan 9, 1992), but it had been shown previously, passed from hand to Christian hand among the video trading network that existed in the days before Bittorrnet. My own copy came via my involvement with Phenomicon, a UFO/hacker/conspiracy convention that was held in Atlanta in 1990 and 1991. We ran "Fart Tilton" on the big screen before the Sub-Genius devival.

Who made the tape? A collection of Tilton's more inspired moments of Jesus fervor and glossalia, highlighted with the addition of fart noises, it's a, lets's face it, juvenile concept that could have been created by anyone with rudimentary video editing equipment. Slightly more professional-quality copies of the original and a color sequel were included on the "Mondo Tilton" compliation videotape released by Russell Media Underground in Dallas in the late 1990s. A staple of "Anime Hell" performances for many years, the clip has since reached an unimaginable audience courtesy filesharing and the Internet.

One wonders what Tilton thinks of his gastrointestinal success. Older and more jowly, his recent programs (retitled "Success In Life") feature a toned down Tilton, soft-pedalling his sucker pitches for an audience that might not respond to the firey schizophrenia of his earlier performances. Or maybe he's just, you know, holding it in.

artworks 1998-2006

2007-06-12T15:15:00.001-07:00

sympathy for the castlegate

2007-06-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

Sure, it was a dump. Even when it was open for business, it had broken windows and sagging ceilings and a funky smell that you could never really get away from. It spent three years vacant, a home for derelicts and stray animals and the occasional body, and now it's a big pile of rubble right next to Interstate 75 The wrecking ball of Price & Sons Demolition has completed its task and nothing remains but smashed bricks, broken glass, and, of course, a mysterious funky smell.

Thanks to years of hosting Star Trek cons, comic book shows, and the first Anime Weekend Atlanta, memories of the place are burned into the brains of many local nerds such as myself. But I wasn't aware that the hulking shadow of the Castlegate loomed large in the history of Atlanta as a whole. Built more than thirty years ago as the Dunfey's Royal Coach, this sprawling hunk of mid-70s crap sat on sixteen acres of prime northside Atlanta real estate. Constructed in the style that would be affectionately known as "mock Tudor", (if anybody held any affection for it), the Dunfey's nightclub would become one of the city's foremost battlegrounds of the sexual revolution. As the haze from the 70s cleared, the Dunfey's would survive a few Atlanta Fantasy Fairs and Burt Reynolds' car crashing into the lobby (in the film The Cannonball Run), but the future would see the hotel under new management, first as a Radission and then as a Howard Johnsons, and subsequently, the Castlegate.

I've always been told that the Atlanta Fantasy Fair was forced to leave the Castlegate because an over-enthusiastic congoer attacked the elevator doors with an axe. I doubt this story, because a casual perusal of the Castlegate's clients and events reveals that they wouldn't turn anyone away. Gun shows, talent shows, dog shows, record shows, Indian weddings. Pot festivals. UFO conferences. Prizefights. Jon-Benet Ramsey-style beauty contests. Alumni associations. Magic: The Gathering tournaments. By the time the 1990s rolled around the Castlegate was the destination of choice for any gathering of more than three people and less than $3,000 to spend.

And why not? The Castlegate was conveniently located, it had lots of parking and restaurants of all kinds close by, and quite a bit of convention space at reasonable rates. It wasn't downtown, so you were spared the no-parking, no-food, no-nothing desert of Atlanta After Dark, and yet it was close enough to downtown to make it a central location for the entire metro area. Best of all, you could be noisy, throw parties, shoot darts, and generally do whatever you wanted with the knowledge that nobody from the hotel was going to lift a finger to stop you.

As such, this made the Castlegate the place where conventions were born, and where they died. Dragoncon started in the Castlegate in 1987 and now they fill downtown's largest hotels; Anime Weekend Atlanta started there in 1995 and now we're busting 3500 and using cavernous convention centers. On the other hand, both Dixie-Trek and the Atlanta Fantasy Fair limped to the Castlegate to hold their final shows, and other shows like Outworld tried to use the Castlegate as a starting point and never got out of the gate. Even my first attempt at conventioneering - the ill-fated Phenomicon convention Scott Weikert and myself ran - had its second and final year at the Castlegate.

Part of this dismal success/failure ratio is of course the whimsical nature of fan conventions and the people who run them. But another element is the Castlegate itself. As mentioned before, the staff simply didn't care, and that's a knife that cuts both ways. Sure, hotel reps looking the other way for a few stains or broken lights is good; but ignoring complaints about rats, insects, malfunctioning AC and lack of hot water is not. The Castlegate had a swimming pool that was never filled, a tennis court that was completely overgrown with kudzu, and a back parking lot with more weeds than asphalt. Windows were broken, door locks didn't work, there was a meeting room full of construction junk and a shopping cart from the nearby Kroger, and a bathroom none dared enter. The low ceilings and maze-like arrangement of the building didn't help matters. The guest rooms were situated on long hallways that radiated out from the lobby in two directions - if you were unlucky to get a room on the far end of the facility, that meant a long, long walk. If that hallway happens to involve stairs, too bad! There might be an access corridor with a ramp, but you'll have to find it for yourself.

Quirks of the facility aside, the Castlegate's less-than-helpful employees frequently made a bad situation worse. Failing to honor agreements about convention space usage and double-booking guest rooms isn't just annoying, it's downright criminal, and these sorts of problems can suck the enthusiasm right out of your average volunteer convention organizer. It was always a crapshoot going into the Castlegate; maybe you'd make it out alive, and maybe you wouldn't.

As the 90s progressed, the Castlegate found itself bought by the Hare Krishnas, who used a wing of the facility for offices and services. The hotel was named in court proceedings surrounding bribes for concession franchises at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport - apparently payoffs were made during breakfast at the Castlegate's restaurant. The hotel finally closed its doors for good in December of 1999, but the story wasn't yet over- amid rumors of re-opening under different names, or the site being used as a Home Depot or IKEA location, the building was used by the United States Marine Corps in August of 2000 for an urban warfare excercise.

Whether or not there actually was a "Dirty Dozen" list of abandoned Atlanta properties that the city wanted torn down is open to debate. The fact is, the property was up for sale for over a year (only $20 million!), but finally the Castlegate heard the call of the wreckin' ball. Atlanta might be better off without the rats, the odors, and the inoperative A/C, but there isn't another low-cost, hassle-free option for the kind of shows the Castlegate championed. The kind of freedom in planning and executing events you got at the Castlegate was a rare thing, and it's sorely missed. Whatever rises in its stead - whether it's a high-rise apartment block, a Home Depot, or somebody's corporate headquarters - you can bet it won't be as much fun, or smell nearly as funky.

(the Castlegate was demolished in 2002; the site is currently occupied by a Wal-Mart).

artworks 1998-2006

2007-06-12T15:13:00.001-07:00

star wars: the japan connection

2007-06-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

(published at the Anime Jump blog in February 2007)

Ah, the late '70's. Disco, custom vans, gasoline lines, and STAR WARS. And STAR WARS ripoffs. Sure, our own Roger Corman got into the act two or three or four times, and even such powerhouses as Disney and Universal were tempted into jumping on the bandwagon, not to mention the Italians with their cinematic masterwork, the aptly named STAR CRASH (cough cough). However, I maintain that for sheer entertainment value, you can't beat Japan. Long known as the home of violent giant robot cartoons and rubber-suit monster epics, this island nation turned its energies towards SF-action films and proved they can make the most original ripoffs around.

I was lucky enough to see Toei's MESSAGE FROM SPACE in a theater, and young enough to enjoy it. Anyone older than 10 would have immediately dismissed it as a pathetic STAR WARS imitation. Years later I was able to appreciate the fact that it was one of Vic Morrow's last roles, that Philip Casnoff would go on to play Frank Sinatra, and that the script was by one of Japan's foremost comics legends, Shotaro Ishinomori. However, at the time, all I knew was that this movie had it all. Space hot-rodders, evil silver-painted aliens, the destruction of the moon, a funny robot, laser guns, swordfights, the works.

The script is actually a SF reworking of a tale from feudal Japan known as the 'Legend Of The Eight Samurai', in which a desperate monarch sends eight magic seeds out into the world. Whoever finds one of the seeds is chosen as a holy warrior and charged with saving the kingdom. Add some spaceships and explosions, and you've got MESSAGE FROM SPACE, as the peaceful planet Tulusia is conquered by the evil Govannis. The Tulusians send out the magic seeds along with the requisite beautiful young space princess, played by Sue Shiomi, fresh from the starring role in Toei's SISTER STREETFIGHTER. Chosen by the seeds are two Earth space-delinquents, a spoiled young rich girl, a sleazy grifter, a retired alcholic space general (dialogue when meeting the remaining heroes: "I must have gotten drunk, wandered in here, and fallen asleep."), his robot comedy-relief sidekick, the true heir to the Govannis throne who was deposed and left to die on a desolate planet, and lastly, the Tulusian who... well, I don't want to spoil it. Let's just say that the mixture of American and Japanese acting talent works fairly well.

The dialog is naturally goofy-sounding. When discussing combining her spaceship with the two hot-rods, our spoiled rich girl Maya says "Oh GAWD what a machine it would be!" The Western actors are pretty much left to their own devices, to over-or-under-act as they see fit. Speaking of under-acting, Vic Morrow wears a sucession of costumes, each more embarrassing than the last.

The film climaxes with a combination trench / fly-into-the-interior-of-the-enemy-base-and destroy-the-energy-core scene that will leave you wondering who ripped off who. The special effects are actually pretty good. When destroying the huge enemy space battleship at the end of the movie, they take the 10-or 12-foot model, douse it with gasoline, and set the thing on fire, and it looks great. Earlier in the film an asteroid belt scene is shot not by costly and then-ineffectual bluescreen, but by making thousands of model asteroids and having the ship (and the camera) weave in and out amongst them. There are exploding planets, space cruisers that fire giant missiles from their noses, anachronistic space-going sailing ships, and enough other flashy stuff to entertain the 7-year olds in the audience (namely me). I swear, there aren't five minutes in this movie that don't feature a laser gunfight, space combat, silver-painted aliens, or explosions.

Sonny Chiba, voted the Japanese most likely to kick your ass, plays the deposed rightful Govannis ruler, and his martial arts skill is immediately evident as he proceeds to wipe out half the Govannis base by himself during the climactic final battle. Sure, there are glowing special effects all over the place to try and compete with STAR WARS' lightsabers, but for honest-to-God swordfighting action, this movie can't be beat. Oh, and it was also directed by Kinji Fukasaku, who directed THE GREEN SLIME in 1969 and would go on to helm BATTLE ROYALE in 2000. Go Kinji!!

Toei would go on to make a TV series out of MESSAGE FROM SPACE, retaining all the models and the name "Govannis" but dumping everything else in favor of POWER RANGERS-style martial arts action and a talking gorilla sidekick. Yeah, a talking gorilla. This was around the same time they made their SPIDERMAN TV show in which Spiderman got a giant robot and a car with machine guns on it. No kidding.

THE WAR IN SPACE, on the other hand, is a tiresome and lackluster Toho production that can't decide whether it wants to rip off STAR WARS, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO, or its own precursor ATRAGON (a.k.a. Kaitei Gunkan, or Undersea Battleship). Here's the plot: evil alien light fixtures bombard the Earth as shown in special effects scenes lifted from other Toho monster movies. The Earth retaliates with its secret super space battleship, the Gohten, which resembles a battleship with fancy crap stuck all over it (like the Yamato) and a big drill in the nose (like the Atragon).

Our multinational (OK, one Caucasian) crew takes off to destroy the alien base on Venus. Along the way they launch space fighters out of an arrangement that resembles nothing more than the cylinder out of a .357 Magnum revolver. The Captain's daughter (played by cute Japanese model Yuko Asano) is captured, taken to Venus, and made to dress slutty, so before they can destroy the base, a special team of hand-picked commandos infiltrates the base, rescues the daughter from the lamest Chewbacca ripoff ever, and escapes just in time for the Captain to activate the drill in the prow of the ship and send it right into the enemy.

This destroys the entire planet Venus.

In its defense, WAR IN SPACE manages to be faintly amusing whenever the alien (you only see one) shows up. Hehas green skin, is dressed in Roman garb, and is dubbed with incredibly incoherent dialog. The effects scenes are adequate when they're not stock footage, and the scene with the axe-wielding, horned Wookiee reject is priceless. However, the exciting parts are seperated by long stretches of attempted storyline involving really boring subplots, and the movie itself is such a obviously slapped-together pastiche of other, vastly superior SF films that viewing becomes a challenge rather than a pleasure. Even the dubbed-in voices seem bored with the whole thing (as perhaps they were). After this disaster, Toho wouldn't make another SF movie for seven years. It's one of the few films I'm glad never made it to American theaters.

Discotek Media recently released a DVD version of WAR IN SPACE that looks great. Unfortunately you can't shine crap. Movie still stinks on ice.

But enough about that turkey. MESSAGE FROM SPACE has yet to be officially released on home video over here, so your best bet is to catch it on TNT (they're running the uncut version from time to time) or shell out for the letterboxed Japanese DVD. Even though at first glance it's just another STAR WARS ripoff, I think everybody will agree that, ripoff or not, it's one darned entertaining film.

Dave Merrill

(this article first appeared in the Star Wars fanzine BLUE HARVEST and thereafter at the fine website ANIME JUMP.)

artworks: 1998-2006

2007-06-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

the four marjoes

2007-04-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

four images of popular television and screen star Marjoe Gortner.