View-Master! Better Than Awesome

Remember View-Master? The little stereoscopic viewer that allowed you to look at colourful picture-reels started in 1939 as a kind of travelogue picture viewer, but in 1966 (the best year ever!!!) the disk subjects expanded to include cartoon characters and popular TV shows!

When you bought the viewer (a nice, comely brown in my era, as you see by the photo), it came with a sample disk titled "What in the World Do You Want to See?". Now at that time, there were a number of things I "wanted to see", few of which are appropriate to mention here, and none of which were addressed on the free disk. What it did show, however, was a little commercial for the selection of disks you could buy that would take you "From Arizona (picture of a girl with a herd of goats in a desert) To Zanzibar!(man kneeing in front of grass hut, inspecting coffee beans). From the Depths of the Ocean (shark about to gnaw on your face), To the heights of Mt. Everest! (man on snowy cliff...could be Everest, could be the snow-bank by my school).From the Ancient Wonders (really cool picture of a model of an ancient Greek temple), To Outer Space! (picture of the model of the Saturn V rocket you wished you got for Christmas instead of those socks).

I still have our viewer, plus six original packs of disks, including Quick-Draw McGraw, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Wonders of the Deep, The Seven Wonders of the World (one disk per set of wonders) Peanuts and, my personal favorite, Prehistoric Monsters. The disks usually came with a little story book that gave you more detail than what they could fit into the tiny window above the image you were looking at. I have to admit, I don't think I ever read one of those booklets, having skimmed them and likely had been discouraged from reading further by slide titles like "Timid Mollusk" and "The Octopus, timid monster of the sea" (both "Wonders of the Deep"). I guess in my childhood innocence I was supposed to wonder what made them "timid", but all honestly, I was too busy wondering if the Yellowfin Grouper on picture #7 could swallow a diver whole to concern myself too much about underwater timidity.

I remembered all this because today I bought an old View-Master packet called "F.B.I Agent" at an antique store today ($2.00, no tax). The cover showed a picture of a stiff-looking fellow in a black suit shaking hands with J. Edgar Hoover. I had hoped at least once of the reels showed J. Edgar modelling a selection of his favorite gowns, but that wasn't to be the case. Instead, we get the story of agent "Bill Brown" from his first days of training at Quantico, to his apprehension of a kidnapper through the brilliant ruse of prentending to ask him directions while two agents leap at him from behind a large red Oldsmobile. Unlike many of the later View-Master sets that used pictures of 3D models, this one featured stereoscopic photos of people dressed like agents, or maybe the Blues Brothers, posed to demonstrate the action of the story. My personal favorite is the riveting "Bob Works Late Making his Official Report" slide, # 13 on disk 2! I can't imagine any child not being thrilled beyond repair thinking of a future of late-night paperwork at the F.B.I.

Eventually View-Master came up with newer versions like the "talking" View-Master, but I'll always have a soft spot for the old brown plastic viewer. Definitely Better Than Awesome!

How Phobic Are you?

Have you noticed how often people get accused of being "-phobic" about something? What used to be a suffix with a specific clinical definition has become a label that instantly dismisses someone's objections as being rooted in fear and, therefore, groundless. The term has wormed it's way into popular culture which, through it's over-use as a rather patronizing attack against critics, has bled it of any real meaning. You don't like KFC? You must be pullusophobic! Don't like me stealing from your store? How can you be so kleptophobic? Then I started to wonder....what kinds of "-phobics" would describe some classic monster movie stars?

Frankenstein's monster-obviously pyrophobic, what with all those torches being swung at him. Clearly, he didn't appreciate the villager's friendly attempts to show him how to write his name against the night sky. Therapy: Listen to The Doors try to set his night on fire.

King Kong-aeroplanophobic! fear of airplanes! Typical "luddite" reaction when introduced to a new technology-destroy it! Obviously, Kong's son thought him seriously out-of-date, which probably inspired him to dye himself white in rejection of his father's archaic and patronizing attitudes. Therapy: hug a carry-on.

Sinbad-cyclophobic! How else would you describe his aversion to the Cyclops in 7th Voyage? Of course, one could recommend he "get in touch with his inner cyclops", but that would just cause all kinds of potential trouble. Therapy: try to really dig monocles

Captain Patrick Hendry-vegetaphobic! The hero from The Thing from Another World obviously had "issues" with high fibre greens, and may have even struck out with a comely vegan at some point. Therapy: take anger out on "comedian" carrot top.

Major Cummings: cephaloreperophobic! The lead in "Fiend Without a Face" obviously had an irrational bias against crawling brains, as evidenced by his hyper-aggresive behavior towards those shy and misunderstood little critters who only wanted to jump up and hug him! Therapy: embrace his inner cauliflower

The Awesomest movie casting -Jem & the Holograms

Ok, this has been floating around the internet for some time now..the prospect that Hasbro will produce a movie based on it's 1980's line of toys and cartoon, Jem and the Holograms. And it's about time! Jem is so thoroughly 80's, so cloyingly "girly", and so deserving of a re-boot that it's producers only have to "not fail" to make this a huge hit. "Jem", of course, was actually Jerrica Benton, owner of "Starlight Music" and "Starlight House", a foster home for girls who never stopped dressing like it was the 80's. Jerrica transforms herself into the pink-mopped glamour-puss Jem by touching her pointy earrings and saying "showtime, Synergy", which is the cue for a sophisticated computer program (thoughtfully also named Synergy) to encase Jerrica in the hologram image of the titular diva.

Backed by her band The Holograms, Jem & her plucky gal-pals sing, dance and foil the plots of their evil rival Eric Raymond and his band of anti-Holograms called "The Misfits". The Misfits are three rude gals fronted by lead-bully "Pizzazz", who, though accurately boasting in the show's title song that "our songs are better", never seem to defeat Jem despite their outpouring of nasty tricks. Jem is also caught in a weird love triangle with the band's manager/roadie, the pouty, purple-haired "Rio", who breathlessly pursues both Jerrica and Jem...who is Jerrica....but she won't tell him....because....um....yeah. Add to this mix music-video performances by both The Holograms and The Misfits (which, for the Holograms included rainbows, unicorns, stars, pegasuses and estrogen, and for the Misfits; footballs, giantism and littering) made Jem & The Holograms easily the most "truly outrageous" plastic fashion doll endorsement ever conceived!!

Now for the movie! I'm not sure when or if this thing will ever get produced, but here's the suggestions by AGF (awesome girl-friend) and myself. See if you agree.

Jem: Taylor Swift. Who could be better? Taylor Swift is already pretty-much a living, singing plastic fashion doll. All she needs are those ninja-star earrings and she's got it made!

Pizzazz: Lady Gaga. Others have suggested this and we agree it's the best casting ever! Pizzazz is angular, talented and totaly lacking in conventional fashion-sense, just like Lady Gaga!! Think of how awesome the soundtrack album would be with her contribution. But that's not all...how about:

Synergy: Katy Perry. Another "truly outrageous" fashionista, Katy Perry would be the perfect model for the near-omnipotent, sentient computer program. She could even sing "pre-teenage Dream" for the soundtrack.

Eric Raymond: Neal Patrick Harris. What can we say? NPH looks great in a three-piece suit, and is able to reek arrogance as evidenced by his role in How I Met Your Mother. Actually, we think NPH should take the lead in developing this project!!

Rio Pacheco: Robert Pattinson. Already used to producing a vacant and breathless character in the Twilight series, Pattinson whuold just have to roll up his sleeves and dye his hair purple, and you have the perfect dazed and longing Rio.

The Holograms/ The Misfits: cast members from Glee/ American Idol. With all the star-power in the casting listed above, we feel the bands should not be populated with too many big names, and since these folks are already used to starring in teen-angst soap-operas, we feel they would easily fit in as band members.

So there you have it! The best cast ever for the Jem & The Holograms movie. Neal Patrick Harris...are you listening to this??? It's up to you now!

B.I.G. movie lines!!

Who doesn't love classic movie dialogue? Of course, I'm not talking about lines like "You played it for her, you can play it for me", or "The, uh, stuff dreams are made of". I'm thinking of those great, creative and often bewildering lines of dialogue found in those amazing 50's drive-in classics!

If you're looking to mine excellent dialogue, you should start by watching the movies of film-maker extraodonaire, Bert I. Gordon. Dubbed "Mr. B.I.G" by Famous Monsters editor Forry Ackerman, Bert filmed some of the most entertaining low-budget movies of the 50's and 60's. These movies entranced us monster kids growing up and, while some of their technical achievements may seem a bit "low tech" by today's standards (common exclamations include "hey! they're just grashoppers climbing on a post-card!",and "hey! I can see right through that rocket ship!"), their entertainment value is second to none! (Actually, some of the effects still stand up pretty well! It took me three viewings to realize the "puppet people" stored in jars in "Attack of the Puppet People" were just slightly curved photographs)

Due to the fantastical nature of his movies, it was probably inevitable that some lines ended up coming across as a little, oh, let's say weird. Here's a sampling of some of my faves from two of his movies:

King Dinosaur (1955) The crew of a space ship land on the planet "Nova", where they are imperiled by giant dinosaurs. Their only chance of escape is summed up by the ship's doctor when he exclaimed "I brought the atom bomb. I think this is a good time to use it!" Oh, when is it not a good time to break out the old atom bomb? They're as useful as WD-40! (also in this picture, we see the credit "featuring Little Joe-the honey bear". As far as I know, this was "Little Joe's" only movie credit before he changed his name, possibly to "Gentle Ben" or "Yogi Bear")

War of the Colossal Beast (1958) A sequel to "The Amazing Colossal Man" where an unfortunate air force colonel gets irradiated, only to grow into a surley giant wearing an "expandable sarong", for which the giant credits "army ingenuity" (hey, I'm impressed!! How many armies could whip us a giant expandable sarong??). In this sequel, the giant, Col. Glenn Manning, is found to be alive and stomping through Mexico. In tracking him down, a puruer exclaims "Giants can run fast, They have long legs". Perhaps Glenn has a shot at the Rockettes with them amazing gams of his. When the pursuers find giant footprints, they exclaim "What ever made these fotprints must be 60 feet tall.", to which Glenn's sister, Joyce, exclaims, "Glenn is 60 feet tall!". Could the two be related some how??????

Of course, Mr. B.I.G. didn't have a monopoly on great lines. In the excellent movie Kronos (1957) a giant cubist robot from "up there" is sent to Earth to drain all it's power and return it to it's owners, the Ray-O-Vac company. Brave scientists led by Dr. Leslie Gaskell (played by the breathless Jeff Morrow) search for a way to stop the robot at (at one point Gaskell laments that he's possibly "pulled the scientific boner of all time"). Not impressed by this feat, Kronos continues to piston across the countryside, until the good guys hit upon the idea of reversing his electrical change by dropping something like robot itch powder on him from a jet plane. On his approach towards the target, the pilot asks the control tower "Can you pinpoint the target for me?". Oh, I don't know..... could it possibly be that 200' tall alien robot???

As you can see...endless, timeless entertainment from Mr. Gordon and others of his vintage!! Thanks for the great times, Bert!!

Archie's Sound Effects

Having researched Archie comics ads, I thought I'd say a few words about their sound effects. Words like "brrrrf". Having mainly read super-hero or horror/fantasy comics as a kid, I was used to seeing sound effects and random vocalizations depicted in the comics. What book wouldn't benefit from the insertion of a "thwack", "skreeee" or "ba-da-bum"? When words failed the hero, victim or outrageous creature, a simple "graaough" "hnuuuh" or the ever-popular "aieeee" sufficed (with 'aieee', the more 'eeeee's' at the end of the word, the more terrifying the situation).

Archie, however, had it's own lexicon of onomatopoeia. When someone laughed, it wasn't "ha" or "har", it was usually "hyuk" or "hyok". Actions like slobbering or smootching were clearly represented with the words "slobber" or "smootch". My personal favorite, however has to be "brrrrf", as it neither copies a sound or utterance one would make in any situation, nor is it an idetifiable verb or adjective. What was it supposed to be showing in this example? Dread? Fear? Flatulance? Grinding teeth? The sound of a chain-saw not shown in the panel? It's still a mystery to me, but the more I look at it, the more I think I'll try to work "brrrf" into my vocabulary. "The car won't start....brrrf". I just won the lottery....brrrf". "Your Uncle is coming to live with us.....brrrrrrrrrrrrf". Yep, this will work out well. Happy "brrrf" everyone.

Comic Ads Part Deux

If you read this blog you've already seen my previous post regarding the wonder and mystery of some of the comic book ads I saw as a kid. In all fairness, these were only the ads I'd see in copies of Spiderman, The Flash, or Magnus, Robot Fighter. There was, however, an alternate world of comic ads, one aimed at the predominantly feminine audience found among the readers of Archie comics!

Archie, of couse, is that perpetually teenage carrot-top with the odd cross-hatching scratched on the side of his head. Abley assisted by his friend with the tape-worm, Jughead, and pursued by the uber-feminine Betty and Veronica, Archie indulged in hilarious "hi-jinx" that ranged from getting his "japoly" working to fighting crime and solving mysteries (though the mystery of Jughead's orientation, a topic of debates for generations, has never been satisfactorally solved). Guys would occasionally read Archie comics; while waiting for a hair-cut (if there were no copies of "Sgt. Rock" or "Kid Colt, Outlaw" available) or to pass the time at the cabin until the rain stopped, but for the most part it was the girls who enjoyed reading about what they could expect when they reached High School (boys just read about what they could expect if they were bombarded with cosmic rays, which seemed infinitely more useful to us at the time).

Consequently, the ads in Archie comics tended to be aimed more towards young girls who were eager to begin lives as happy and popular young women. In order to do this, they apparently needed to be equipped with "sassy sayings" pendants, to let the world know if they were "Hot Stuff", a "Foxy Lady" or a "Super Chick". Some, like "His" and Hers" seemed to be aimed at young Juliets who already had a Romeo in tow. My personal favorite of the group is "Tennis Bum", an endearment that suggests both hair that is tragically too big, and shorts that are tragically too small.

Needing "Longer Nails" seemed to be an urget health issue, so the next ads offered
"Longer Nails in Minutes". For only $1.98, the unfortunate girl could transform her nails that are "cracked", "ugly" and an abomination to all that's decent, into glamorous back-scratchers that would be the envy of the sandbox set. Unlike her class-mates, pets, or clergy, "sta-long" nails would truly be a "girl's best friend".

But one doesn't really want to grow up too fast. To help retain that childhood innocence, the reader also had the option of buying 100 dolls! "Don't shake your head in disbelief, It's True!" the ad promised; each guaranteed to be made of "genuine styrene and synthetic rubber". Everything from baby dolls, dancing dolls, cowboy dolls and "foreign" dolls were promised, the last possibly being espionage dolls sent by a foreign power to steal our styrene secrets.

Like the monsterous ads, I never actually met a kid who ordered any of these, but I knew a lot who wanted to. Oddly enough, few were "tennis bums" or "hot stuff".

Ah Christmas!! Catalogue Time!

Well, Halloween is over and, as every right-thinking monster kid knows, traditionally this was the time we started our serious planning for Christmas. Of course by planning, I mean we poured over Christmas catalogues with the intensity of little Howard Carters uncovering the tomb of King Tut. I know that I, personally, never employed as much scrutiny on any of my homework assignments as I did over the toy section of the old Eaton's, then later Sears catalogues. And Why not? The Christmas catalogues always arrived wrapped in a brown paper sleeve, hinting discreetly that the contents were sure to blow your mind, and were not safe to risk allowing them to casually flip open in front of, say, expectant mothers or people taking nitrates for heart conditions.

Toy sections were usually somewhere in the middle of the catalogue, after ladies undergarments and orthopedic shoes, but before pole lamps and canned fruits and nuts. The toy section was usually arranged by age and gender, with nondescript infant and toddler toys taking up the first few pages. No need to waste time here! The next few pages were often board games. Pause for a bit...there could be something interesting! Games like Battleship and Risk always looked cool, and the old stand-bys like Clue or Trouble would always have been a pleasant surprise. Some games appeared in the catalogue for decades, despite the fact I never knew a kid who ever owned one. A prime example was a game with a little suction-cup dart pistol, where the goal was apparently to shoot a chicken to cause it to lay a plastic egg. I never had the chance to try this one, but I'm sure it caused no end of havoc with boys who were raised on chicken farms who were desperate to re-create the effect in real life.

Moving on, there was usually a large section of girls toys. Very gender-role specific girls toys, which I'm sure would cause upset in some circles today. The Easy-Bake Oven, toy stoves and baby carriages and dolls galore. I have to admit, curiosity caused me to pause here every now and then, usually to try to get some glimpse into the workings of the unfathomable alien mind of the 8 year old girl.

Finally, patience ans sweaty palms pushed to the limit, I reached the boy's section. Glorious! Here, insulated from the true spirit of Christmas, was a treasure trove of action, adventure and mayhem. My personal-favorite pages involved either that 12 inch arsenal of democracy known as G.I. Joe, or his slightly smaller and bendier space explorer counterpart, Major Matt Mason! It would have been, not only inaccurate, but an outrage to refer to these figures as "dolls", especially in front of the young consumer drooling over their potentialites. These, my friend, were action figures, a name denoting thrills, adventure and possible future interactions with fire crackers or family pets.

Almost as good as the action toys were the toy gun pages! Yeah, I've heard the arguements about not wanting to instill violence in young minds, but for most of us, that violence was already there! We've survived endless playground games, schoolyard hazings and sibling abuses to know the world was full of conflict, and if you weren't prepared to deal with it you might as well just turn to the Bridge table section of the catalogue and just stop being a kid altogether! Luckily, toy manufacturers knew that, and were prepared to supply us with the ultimate in clever and devastating weapons of mass mischef!

After thoroughly scoping out the section several times, it came time to put together "the proposal", wherein I priced out assorted permutations and combinations of pricing schemes to present to my parents. These usually were in the vein of "if you plan to spend $20.00 on me you could get me this and this, but if you were going to spend $25.00 on me, you could get me this, this this and this"! World economics wouldn't be in such a poor state if they just let some kids with toy catalogues work it out.