
POKEMON TRASH BALLS INSTRUCTIONS

BIG BERTHA'S REVENGE

MR. PITCHER

World War I Ace Max Immelmann earned two, as did Corporal Adolf Hitler, and now U.S. teen-agers are buying them by the gross. Dug out of attics and curio shops and freshly minted by the thousands, the German Iron Cross has become the newest surfer's emblem and high school fad. Nobody, except parents, seems upset by the Iron Cross's connotations. "When kids ask me about the 1939 inscription," says one distributor, "I just tell them it was a big year for surfing." Those who do know don't mind. "We just don't have the feeling about this Nazi thing that our parents do," explains Los Angeles Teen-Ager Rick Higgins. In fact, what parental disapproval there is seems only to fuel the fad. Admits Palmdale's Paul O'Hara, 15: "It really upsets your parents. That's why everyone buys them." The vogue started with California's Hell's Angels, whose motorcycle brigades also like to sport Nazi swastikas (TIME, Jan. 21). Then it spread to surfers, who began exchanging their St. Christopher medals for Iron Cross pendants (now sold as his-and-her pairs, charm bracelets and even earrings). Soon landlocked emulators across the U.S. took up the fad. Explains Chicago's Walter Wagner, 17: "I'd like to be a surfer, but you can't do much on Lake Michigan. If you can't surf and you can't have a board, at least you can have something." Spread across the country by chain and variety stores, the crosses are now being made of copper, wood, enamel and silver plate, and are being sold by such quality stores as Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman and B. Altman. Largest manufacturer is Rhode Island's Ronnie Jewelry, Inc., which is now turning out some 24,000 crosses a day, calls them "the hottest single novelty item in years." But no one takes greater pleasure, and profit, from the new craze than Los Angeles' Ed ("Big Daddy") Roth, the 275-lb. supply sergeant for Hell's Angels, who was first on the bandwagon, has sold 51,800 to date. Roth, who specializes in morbid-art decals for the hip trade (latest sample: a baby with sign reading "Born Dead"), sees the Iron Crosses as setting a whole new trend, and he has already followed up with an even newer vogue: plastic copies of the Wehrmacht iron helmet. Says he: "They really reach into a kid's deepest emotions." Beyond that he sees a big potential market for SS emblems and Nazi swastikas. "You know," he says expansively, "that Hitler did a helluva public relations job for me."
Weekly World News was my favorite supermarket tabloid of all time but sadly went under in 2007. They are however, now online in their current incarnation here. Which is obviously not the same, the Weekly World News would always bring a smile to my face when i saw it at the checkout counter. More excitingly though is that Google now has archived Weekly World News on their insane Google Books thing. CHECK IT OUT & LEARN ABOUT THE AMAZING WORLD OF WEEKLY WORLD NEWS!!!!!!!!
Apparently the Japanese are being fattened up in preparation for the REPTILLIAN HARVEST by McDonalds & Co, or maybe they are just discovering the wonder of burgers as high as an elephant's eye? Either way, the universal human impulse of creating enormous sandwiches has hit Japan with the MEGA MAC!!! It's not exactly NEW NEWS, but it's GOOD GNUS (or is it?) & IT'S GNU 2 ME!!! See, i was looking up the word MEGA to see if anyone was using it for a magazine & this damn MEGA MAC kept on coming up. Apparently the Japanese saw SUPER-SIZE ME & thought it was a commercial for MACUDONARLDSU.
Observe the astounding levels of burger stacking by Takeshi Fukuda









When i was a kid i got a huge box of 70s kid's comics from a friend's older sister. While i really wanted some old Ghost War Stories types of comics, all of the Little Lulus, Baby Hueys, Popeyes, Beetle Baileys & Sugar & Spikes really stuck to my brain. The ads were another revelation. Sea Monkeys. Charles Atlas' muscle building book. Johnson Smith novelties. Roach Designs t-shirts & embroidered patches by Gandalf. Monkeys by mail. Foreign stamps. Magic Crabs. If you're lucky some old Marvels have ads from Ed Roth's "Weirdo Pad".
Another friend of mine had a box full of old Ghost War Stories that we'd read into the late hours when we were kids. The stories were so awesomely morbid & judgmental. "Sergeant Gerald ditched his squadron under fire & was ambushed by ghosts of war in an old abandoned farmhouse where the exact same thing had happened 25 years earlier."
I believe in throw-away titles that secretly aren't throw aways. Devil Dinosaur. Madballs.
When my boys are old enough, they'll have an enormous trunk completely full of old comics to read with their friends.

My boy's doctor's office used to have a great Red Baron type Fokker Dr.I triplane kite in the waiting room, along with some other less cool ones. One day we're waiting for a routine check-up & i notice the kite is gone! Somehow knowing the answer already, i went up to the front desk to ask, "What happened to the Red Baron kite?" The lady behind the desk said, "Oh, we took it down." "That's obvious, but why'd you take it down?" I pressed. "Oh, well, a patron complained about it being associated with Nazis." she said, looking down. My blood began to boil, "Do you know which war he flew in? There were no Nazis in WWI. This is just anti-German!" "Well, when a patron complains..." i wasn't listening anymore. One of the kites they kept up in the waiting room was a pirate ship, which i have NO problem with, except that pirates are played out. BUT, pirates are universally bad characters, even if you're a pirate you know that, but the Red Baron was one of the Knights of the Air, respected even by his enemies during WWI! The Red Baron is also an icon of coolness, very few things look as cool as the red color of his Fokker Dr.I triplane with the black Iron Cross emblazoned on the side. Nothing! After seeing that the plane ride at the Oakland Zoo had removed the iron crosses from the sides of their red planes i knew something had to be done! The Red Baron needed an advocacy group, "The Friends of the Red Baron".
