Saturday, September 26, 2009

Elvira's Trick or Treat Tips

MTV, 1986. This begins to veer into British Splosh! fetishism yeah? You know, after a childhood of "You Can't Do That On Television" & then later "Double Dare" plus all of the slime toys with Masters of the Universe & Ghost Busters & the TMNT, then that "Who Sell Out" cover, Gallagher & 3 Stooges shorts, i'm pretty much primed to be into Sploshing. Maybe i am! Where's my can opener?

Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen Show

I got a feeling that things will go back to this at some point, at least in some way.

I love every aspect of this clip. Check out the staging for the Killer's band, it's beautiful.

Frank Zappa Interviewed by Dr. Demento

Two more of my favorite mythological characters talking to each other!


Check out Dr. Demento's 1984 Halloween show. This is one of the first shows of his i taped back when staying up until midnight was late for me!

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth interviews Von Dutch


Cool interview here with a couple of my favorite mythological creatures. Apparently the rights to the Von Dutch name have been purchased & transferred a couple times & are now some kind of high-end brand name now. Pretty weird what they'll do with stuff like that. Unfortunate.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Lipstick & Dynamite


If you're a fan of tough as nails, old broads who've seen everything, & why the hell are you lurkin' around GOBLINKO if you isn't, then you should check out Lipstick & Dynamite, a documentary about the ladies of Professional Wrestling's Golden Era. It takes a certain kind of man to be a professional wrestler, & it takes an even more certain kind of woman to do the job. We get alot of the Fabulous Moolah, who is the most famous of lady wrestlers & for good reason, i was noticing she looks like Annette Funicello taken to a life of crime. A couple parts had me in tears, but i don't think anyone noticed.

Hey Good Lookin' - Coney Island Scene


Man.

Ralph Bakshi, my hero.


The fireman transforms in Ralph Bakshi, voiced by Bakshi himself. I showed this cartoon to a theatre full of little kids & their moms. ha ha. Whoops! "I've never seen a cartoon like THAT before!"
Here's Ralph talking at Comic Coon.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

FILL YOUR HEAD WITH TRASH!!!

Fill Your Head With Trash! - Promotional Poster for MWC
Stop buying your kids that Japanese Crap! Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps cards are out NOW! 27 Krazy, Kreepy & Gross characters! Comics, a puzzle & KOOL KRAP on the backs! Klassic American low-brow trash culture that'll put hair on your teeth! Always "G" rated!
$2 for first pack by mail, a buck a pop for each additional one. Postpaid.
$20 for a box of 20 packs. Control the market!
Limited run insures KRAZY KOLLECTIBILITY!
paypal gogoblinko at gmail.com
SHOPS, contact me for wholesale prices!
Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps Cards

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Mr. Sean Mouths Off

Mr. Sean Mouths Off
This was going to be the flip-side to the Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps wax pax but it made gluing them shut impossible. So as to not waste, here it is for you.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

BANANA UPDATE: Banana sex cult leader hunted by police in Papua New Guinea

Police in Papua New Guinea police are hunting the leader of a sex cult who promised villagers a bumper banana harvest if they had sex in public. From the London Telegraph.
The man and his followers fled naked into the wilderness when police tried to arrest them at the weekend, the Post Courier newspaper reported. It said the villagers in Morobe province, about 120 miles north of the capital Port Moresby, had been promised their banana harvest would increase 10-fold every time they had sex in public. It said the cult leader was wanted for a range of alleged offences over the past four months, including threatening people and illegal sexual activity. Inspector Adam Busil said officers had surrounded the man's hut early on Saturday but he refused to come out. The suspect then made a dash for freedom with about seven naked followers. "He used his two wives as a human shield to avoid being shot at by the policemen," he said.
"They were called on to surrender but they refused." He said extra officers were being called in to track down the members of the group.

GOLDEN GLORY


AT FIRST I'M LIKE, "WHERE IS MY GODDAMN TIME MACHINE?" BUT AT SECOND THOUGHT, WHAT THE HELL IS STOPPING ME FROM MAKING THIS HAPPEN? NOTHING.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Sid Reads Mad


An easy symbolic representation of what this is all about.

Tama-Re: The Golden City of weirdness

Maybe i was too busy obsessing over fake barf & switchblade combs or better, gin & razor-blades, but i somehow overlooked Tama-Re, the awesome Egypt-themed cult compound of Dwight York & his Nuwaubians. The whole thing is long gone now, shrouded in scandal, but it is exciting nevertheless.

"Not long after you’re pretty sure you’ve gone too far, roll up and over one last hill and the pyramids are right there. There’s a black one and a gold one, and a brown-faced sphinx facing the road, and a tall obelisk, and an arch-shaped gate decorated with ankhs and other hieroglyphs, through which runs a road lined with statues of mostly animal-headed deities, all brightly painted in primary colors. Farther back, up on the rise, is a recognizable one, Isis, with ebony skin and her winged arms spread. No level of expectation can dilute the surprise–you can’t believe what you’re seeing. Tama-Re, Egypt of the West, has that Magic Kingdom quality."

Search term: "Jughead's hat"

From the fan-tastic I'm Learning to Share blog.
The other night, while attending a small dinner party, the conversation turned suddenly to the subject of Jughead's trademark; his goofy, crown-like hat.

I was surprised to discover that I hadn't brought it up, given my Archie obsession (that I wasn't aware I had until relatively recently).

"Well no, I don't think it's meant to be a crown..."

"Like one of those paper ones, that comes from inside an exploding party favor - - ?"

"Um, more like, uh, a kind of beanie - - ? You can see them in old movies, old comics and stuff, so surely people must have actually worn them. I guess they were popular with kids in the 1930s or '40s, during the depression. Homemade from, uh, felt or - - leather, maybe? Encrusted with buttons or bottle caps or other bling. Think of 'The Little Rascals'. Kids shining shoes on street corners, or - - y'know, teen-age delinquents riding around in jalopies."

It was quickly agreed that probably some answers could be found online, probably even pictures of people actually wearing the things, and thus it was easy for the topic of conversation to quickly move elsewhere.

As you know, searching the internet does bring answers, but often not quite definitive, wholly satisfying ones.
- - And don't hold your breath waiting for definitive answers to appear here, either.
Close, maybe, but not quite.
Read the whole thing here!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Disney Buys Marvel: Superheros and Where the Boys Aren't

From Whiskey's Place.
Disney, desperate for growth in entertainment, has made a deal with $4 billion to buy Marvel Entertainment. As detailed by Deadline Hollywood Daily there are many entanglements to the deal, including Marvel's licensing deals with Hasbro (which makes Marvel Comics character based toys), Sony, Fox, and other studios that have extensive rights to make films of characters including the X-Men, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Ghost Rider. Disney will have to pay considerably more to make those deals go away and gain exclusive control over all of Marvel's characters. Nevertheless, Disney is driven by one single factor: tween girls are not enough. Not enough, anyway, to keep the cash flow going for Disney at a time when cash-strapped parents are thinking twice about $100 Hannah Montana concert tickets, and efforts to push tween stars Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez have flopped. DVD sales are down, dramatically, and piracy, among other factors, threatens to seriously impact Disney's long term cash flow.

Like other studios, Disney also has to combat the decline in DVD sales. Hollywood still makes the bulk of its profits from home-video sales. But that market, which grew more than 15% a year between 2000 and 2004, has begun to wilt. According to Adams Media Research, consumer spending on home video fell 9% last year. It projects home-video sales will fall between 8% and 10% for 2009.Mr. Iger has said DVD sales are in an irreversible decline, but he said Marvel's strong brand profile should offer a measure of protection. "They are not immune from the changes that we're seeing," Mr. Iger said, referring to Marvel, during a conference call with analysts Monday morning. "But they have established a footing that we think is more solid than what you typically see in the nonbranded, noncharacter driven movie."


Disney desperately needs boys (and their parents cash despite Disney CEO Iger's statements in the WSJ link above that they don't) and all efforts to develop anything along those lines internally have flopped. Hence the deal for Marvel. As in my post from last year, "Comic Books Dirty Little Secret: They Don't Make Much Money," if Disney thinks that buying Marvel Comics will give them a sudden insight into what tween and teen boys, along with young men, think and like, they are in for a rude awakening. Sadly, the total clue-lessness of Disney in regards to creating what boys like is indicative of an Entertainment Industry that has become totally dependent on a female audience, to it's detriment. Disney spent considerable money on market research with focus group guru Kelly Pena, the "Kid Whisperer" to figure out what boys liked to develop Disney XD, a channel aimed at boys.

While Disney XD is aimed at boys and their fathers, it is also intended to include girls. “The days of the Honeycomb Hideout, where girls can’t come in, have long passed,” said Rich Ross, president of Disney Channels Worldwide. Disney XD, which took over the struggling Toon Disney channel, has improved its predecessor’s prime-time audience by 27 percent among children 6 to 14, according to Nielsen Media Research. But the bulk of this increase has come from girls. Viewership among boys 6 to 14 is up about 10 percent. Disney's Rich Ross is listed as one of the more powerful openly gay men in Hollywood by After Elton. It is questionable how well he and other execs operating in the very gay friendly and female-oriented Disney empire understand and relate to boys concerns, let alone straight male concerns and desires in entertainment. Disney has been successful in creating girl-friendly series and movies, featuring Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. But neither Lovato nor Gomez have been able to break out to the degree that Miley Cyrus has, hampered by a down economy and the miscues of Disney expecting a large Hispanic contingent of fans. A critical error given that Hispanics consume Spanish Language media, most of it from Mexico (Telemundo and Univision).

Disney has found that tween girls are not enough, not enough to keep the cash flows Disney is accustomed to, in a down economy and where few successors to the Pop Princess parade of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Hillary Duff, and Miley Cyrus have "hit." Certainly none of Disney's internal measures, including Disney XD have been "boy friendly" and Disney itself has no track record of providing entertainment boys like. Execs seemed puzzled that the Jonas Brothers and "High School the Musical" are not pulling in boy viewers. Hence the deal for Marvel. With characters, situations, and storylines that appeal to boys and young men. Disney certainly needs them, being unable to develop that on its own. But if Disney expects that Marvel executives will be able to provide much-needed expertise on boys, they have another thing coming. Marvel Comics for example in their 2006 10-Q filed with the SEC admits their readership "extends" through the mid thirties. A trip to your local comic book store on New Comic day (Wednesday) will up that by about five years, in your own estimation. Marvel has made forays into online comics, aimed at younger audiences, and not dependent on Diamond Distribution (the sole distributor for the 2,500 comic shops where Marvel's weekly comic books can be purchased). However, those efforts have only netted a few million dollars per year, as stated in their Annual Report filed with the SEC. Note within that report, the 2008 revenues from publishing (Comic Books) amounted to about 19% of revenues.

Marvel's Comic books are written for, edited by, and purchased by, a few men in their late thirties and early forties, who want "hip/trendy" versions of their childhood superheros. Gay themes pop up constantly, as do openly gay superheros, excessive political correctness, and other things that are death to male tween, teen, and young adult popularity. Noticeably, NO comic book character has been allowed to kill, much less punch out, Osama bin Laden, despite Comic Book writer/producer Frank Miller ("Sin City," "300") desire to write such a story. Instead we have Spider-Man teaming up with Obama. To presumably, Hope and Change villains instead of fighting them.

It is true that the deeply assimilated Jews who created comics, from Siegel and Schuster (Superman), to Bob Kane (Captain America) to Stan Lee (Hulk, Fantastic Four) were able to tap into young adolescent boy's fantasies of power, of leadership, of success with girls, and so very well. In ways still remembered anywhere from seventy to forty years ago. But no real new "hit" character has been created at Marvel since the Punisher in 1974, thirty five years ago. While appealing to young men, the Punisher is certainly not a character appropriate or popular with young boys, who prefer more upbeat and colorful characters. And that's it — no new characters since then that are anything but minor.

Disney's problem, assuming it succeeds in buying Marvel, is that Marvel is coasting on the work done decades ago. All of its existing writers and editors, perhaps more skilled than those of the past, are simply incapable of inventing new characters and situations that appeal to young men and boys. Instead they simply recycle through extra doses of political correctness, existing characters and situations. Leaving nothing new and exciting for boys to claim as their own. Which is not surprising, comics are available only in comic book shops, because of exclusive distribution deals with Diamond Distribution. The Comic book shops number only 2,500, and comics can sell for $5 a copy, putting them out of reach of casual purchases by boys. Much of the publishing revenues are now coming from "trade paperbacks" or compilations of various issues that comprise story arcs, such as the Punisher-Daredevil-Nomad cross-over from the 1990's "Dead Man's Hand." (Sean's note, this paragraph is one of the clearest explanations of my problems with the comic book market i've read.)

Disney has among it's entertainment empire a TV network that is very, very female-oriented and likely to remain so, cable channels that are very female oriented, and ESPN. Its challenge is to integrate Marvel Comics characters into it's existing empire in a way that draws boys and young men to its existing cable and broadcast channels. Which as a practical matter means pairing up available characters like Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Punisher with ... the Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost. Or "the Wizards of Waverly Place" and "Princess Protection Program." Disney will have to spend billions more to reap money from movies with comic book characters Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Ghost Rider, particularly if the company also wants to integrate Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, and so on into the mix (which is a fan favorite and proven winner). Part of the charm of the "Marvel Universe" back when it was read by 12 year old boys, was that characters like Daredevil or Captain America or the Punisher or Ghost Rider could pop up into the middle of a fight between Spider-Man and the Kingpin, and change things. The extended social universe of the New York City based writers and editors, who all knew each other, was mirrored in the comic books and the young male fans loved it.

Now, a collection of loosely organized executives, many of whom do not have a lifetime of working together, some of whom are openly gay (and thus removed from the most basic concern of young men — young women), and most of whom have spent lifetimes producing or managing the production of content aimed at women and girls, must integrate very different content aimed at boys. Of course there must be a "Honeycomb Hideout, where girls cannot come in" because boys do not wish contests to find the twirliest princess nor angsty drama nor other things that appeal to girls but turn boys off.

Prediction: the acquisition of Marvel by Disney will be a share-holder value destroying bust, making the already age-skewed Marvel Comics into "girl friendly" territory and thus of no interest whatsoever to young men and boys.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

999


If you haven't seen or read Galaxy Express 999, you must drop everything, today, on 9-9-9 & pursue this immediately.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Mind Flayer #1

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRODUCERS OF THIS BLOG: GOBLINKO

Mind Flayer #1 is out! 8 half-size pages of small text designed to FLAY YOUR MIND. Dynamic Optimism & Virtue Free From Moralism is the aim, as well as spreading information about the Misanthropic Horror of the Were Trees, the folly of "Social Evolution" theory & Progressive Politics, Jim Jones: Model Communist, Radical Traditionalism, The Swinging Satan's Pendulum, my own "The Emerald Fist" column, hot & not trends for the now & Considering Green Anarchy. About as much jammed into this as your average larger zine. Get yourself this issue & the next issue by mail, for a mere, solitary DOLLAR. You can paypal gogoblinko@gmail.com or you can send us a well-hidden dollar via the post. To Mind Flayer pobox 12044 Eugene OR 97440 USA.