We Are Going to Eat You!

In 1984 or '85, I filmed a zombie epic called "We Are Going to Eat You," the title taken from the poster tagline for Lucio Fulci's "Zombie." I filmed it with the assistance of Mike O., my brother Charlie, his friend Kevin, and two other friends that I had earlier attended St. Pius X with, Chris I____ and Linda R_____. We filmed at the Old Bethpage golf course on Round Swamp Road. This first pic is of me chowing down on Linda's guts, which were pig intestines doused in bingo ink. Please note that, while paying minute attention to my makeup, which can barely be seen, I had forgotten to muss up my hair, which is immediately noticed as neatly combed. Also noticeable was the stain of the ink on my face for a week or so afterward.

People who have seen the film are impressed (that is, revolted) by this scene. Something about the way Linda's lifeless body jerks as I tear her innards out. Good clean fun.
October 2016 UPDATE! Here's the whole movie, uploaded to YouTube years ago by Mike O. Better late than never!

Here Chris valiantly fights off the zombie with a stick, which was supposed to puncture the Ziploc baggie of blood in my pocket. It didn't, which led to the improvised ending...

...wherein I simply squeeze the bag of blood, the idea being to have blood ooze gruesomely through my fingers. Instead, it gushed out in a comical squirt, which was actually still pretty cool. And still not a hair out of place.

Bon Voyage, Captain Fork.

Or "Capt. Fork," as he was invariably abbreviated. He was really Craig Dexter Calame, or "C.M. Calam" when credited as a writer, and I've read he sometimes went by Chris, but you could just call him Mugsy.

That was the name he went by as a performer on The Uncle Floyd Show, a mainstay of my television viewing in the late 70's and early 80's. I know nothing about him, except that he seemed like he could be one of my older brothers' cool friends, and he never failed to make me laugh. He was not an actor or a comedian, but certainly an entertainer.

It may have been something as simple as dangling an enormous balloon from a stick and string, repeatedly bouncing it off Floyd Vivino's porkpie hat until Floyd blew a gasket. It may have been his puppeteering, somehow sparking the dour, stiff Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces into a happy-go-lucky chorus boy. Even if a Bob Dilly bit ran several verses too long, it was still fun to watch. It was like watching a friend, and you tend to be more charitable with friends. Besides, who knows how to make you laugh better than your friends? But that was the Uncle Floyd Show for you, and maybe you had to be there. (See comments for a bit about my brief correspondence with him.)

Anyway, so long, Mugsy! Walkin' out! (Oh wait, that was Artie Delmar...)

Neil Yuck.

Mike Malice of Biography.

Bad News Todd (nearly a dead ringer for Bobby Jon of Survivor).
[October 2022 add: I just read my caption and said to myself, "Huh? Who?"
So to refresh all of our memories...]

Screwing around behind the scenes.

Pot Roast.

One last thing: I read an obituary of Mugsy's that ended by noting he had one son... Hugo. Whether this is a fact, or was included by a friend who thought it was befitting that Mugsy claim the puppet as his own sire, I don't know, and I am not investigating further. Either way, it's perfect.

Have a Dynamite Halloween!

Some images from the September 1975 issue of Dynamite Magazine, as well as the Dynamite Catalog of Year-round Hot Stuff. First, enjoy a puzzle from the perverse prince of peccant puns, Count Morbida himself!

Here are some spaced-out costume suggestions from the same Dynamite. They could have saved some space there by simply writing, "Find stuff around your house and glue it to your face." I mean, Honeycombs? Please.

Oh, this poor kid. Only one month into the new school year and doomed to daily beatings until it's over.

And while we're still feeling Dynamite, here are some classic Bummers for you!

Ad from New York Daily News, 10/18/79

More KISS items for Halloween, a costume and a pricey makeup kit.

Boy, remember the days when a kid could get a good hobo cigar for 38 cents?
I was the Collegeville Frankenstein in second grade (seen here just above the microcephalic Gene Simmons). Of course, at the time I was simply Frankenstein, plus I had always assumed it was a Ben Cooper Frankenstein. Since I discovered this ad, however, I realize it may very well have been the Collegeville Frankenstein, so I'm going with that, just because I enjoy calling it the Collegeville Frankenstein. I'm a man of simple(-minded) pleasures.

Halloween 2023 UPDATE!
I have come from the future to make the photo better, since before it was just half the ad, blurry, and un-blow-upable. I fixed that.
Also, I re-scanned a picture of me as the Collegeville Frankenstein (which can be found elsewhere on this blog with even more allegedly amusing commentary) and another of me as a hobo.

I am absolutely certain I had the cigar--I remember the flaking crumbs of red glitter on the tip, surely the beginning of a lifelong hatred of the fucking stuff--but sadly it didn't make it into the photo. Mom sewed the whimsical patches onto my good jeans (or "dungarees" as she liked to say). When I saw her handiwork, I was momentarily horrified, until she explained that she could easily remove them afterward, and did.

The latter pic says 1976 on the back (and, helpfully, "Paul" and "Halloween," well done ma) so I guess the CF was '75, first grade. In 1977, if I remember correctly, I was Darth Vader, and Chewbacca the year after that. And when I say "if I remember correctly," please mentally fill in at least eight white-guy-shrugging emojis after it.

Me, as the Collegeville Frankenstein.

I think I was in second grade, maybe first (which would make it 1975) at the rather-liberal-but-still-pretty-darn-Catholic St. Pius X. I was dragged out of my class and forced to have this pic taken in another grade's classroom.

My mother made the scarecrow, hence I was granted the dubious honor of posing with it in front of older kids I didn't know. You can see the embarrassment in my feet, curdled into a strange, abashed rictus. Also evident is the fact that no combs were available at St. Pius, although it's entirely possible I left the house looking like that.
(See the Collegeville Frankenstein in a Toys R Us ad, plus your fledgeling Non-Parader as a hobo in this other post over here...)

Saturday Morning!

I'll have to check what year this is from, but I'm sure someone out there can tell me.

Yes, since you're wondering, I am just chucking whatever crap I find in the "My Pictures" folder up onto this blog. What the hell else can I do with it? Write about my life? Where's the fun in that? Do you want to see my wedding pictures? I didn't think so. (Although there were some "far-out space nuts" at the reception, once the apricot Jell-O shots kicked in...)

"Alice Cooper's Wildest Dreams..."

...apparently involve a cowering Vincent Price.

Two Halloween specials that featured KISS. I was not a fan. I did watch the TV movie, but for Anthony Zerbe's masterful turn as evil inventor Abner Devereaux.

 

Outrageous Paul Lynde finally learns to love... Halloween!

Sorry for the poor quality. (Blog, that is.)

Dark Night of the Scarecrow

I liked this one a lot as a kid.

It seemed pretty suspenseful at the time, but doesn't really lend itself to multiple viewings. I believe this was the first outing for Larry Drake's patented simpering half-wit. At least he got to gorily dispatch all the bullies in this one, whereas on L.A. Law, Benny could only quietly daydream of lacing Douglas Brackman's coffee with Drano.

It's the Great Blumpkin, Charlie Brown

From a 1976 TV Guide.

I saw this again a few years back, and I don't think it really held up. The Thanksgiving one was pretty bad too. I dare say the Christmas one is the only genuinely entertaining Charlie Brown special. Yes, I dare say that to you!

Happy Birthday, David K_____.

I had a dream the other night which featured a brief appearance by fellow St. Pius X alumnus David K_____. I didn't recognize him, I just knew it was him. Grown now, as old as me. He was always very small, the smallest boy in class, even through eighth grade, when I last saw him.

I have something physical to remember him by, which I will apparently have forever, since it's still there: a scar on the back of my right hand, near the index knuckle. It's from his overbite, but he didn't actually bite me. I simply edged in too close while Bob H_______ (the tallest boy in class) was swinging Dave around by his ankles. The teachers would regularly remind us that Dave had a kidney ailment, requiring dialysis, and so we should treat him gently. None of us heeded this caution. Certainly not Dave, who flung himself about with Knievel-like abandon.

(I suppose it's possible that I may lose the hand someday, or maybe I will wander into a geriatric fog and forget the origin of the scar. Until that happens, let's just say I'll have it forever and will always remember how it occurred.)

Big Bob stepped on little David's head once. Like, with his full weight. Dave was laying on the floor, looking under a desk, and Bob, on the other side of the desk, stepped over it. (Again, unless the memory is taken from me, I will be able to mentally replay Dave's dismayed squawks until I'm done.) It was an accident, I'm sure, and an occasion of side-splitting mirth to almost everyone.

We were classmates from the first grade, 1975, on. That year (or maybe a little later), another friend, Chris I_____, began collecting tiny pencils. That is, whatever pencils he found lying around the classroom, Chris would head to the wall-mounted sharpener in the classroom's corner and grind them down to virtually useless stubs, saving them in a plastic bag. The black, smudgy points poked through from every side, like the beaks of captured crows. David saw this and got it in his little noggin to collect erasers, and so, with Chris' consent, he spent an entire snack time gnawing off the rubbery ends of Chris' collection--200 or so!--to facilitate his own. I don't remember what he kept them in, or what they resembled in it.

We played together on a little league team. I recall very little little-leaguing among my miniature teammates, but lots of standing around on/in the vicinity of a baseball diamond, looking in random directions, wondering what the rules were, chanting inevitably childish taunts at opponents and teammates alike (made worse by our dull Long Island accents: "We needa pitcha, notta belly yitcha!").

We shared a love of "monster weeks" on the WABC 4:30 Movie, when Japanese creature features were shown, as well as Planet of the Apes and its ever-more-contrived string of sequels.

I'd go over to his house in the afternoon every now and then. We'd play Shogun Warriors, shooting missiles and fists at Star Wars figures. His older brother Paul showed me that, when clenching a fist, the thumb should always go on the outside of your fingers. Apparently, even with the Great Mazinger as a role model, I still got that backwards.

Anyway, I always remembered that his birthday was October 16th. Happy Birthday, David. You sure left your mark on me. I'm looking at it right now.

Here I am. Don't expect too many updates.

How dare you people drag me into the 21st century. My friends' delightful blogs convinced me to set up one of my own. But get this straight, I will not expound on anything that has occurred in the last 25 years, I promise you that! (Unless Bushie-Bush and his creepy cronies do something to really get my skin crawling, and, well, yes, that is a near-daily affliction.) In any case, in keeping with my tragic childhood nostalgia fixation, here is a pic of something. I don't know what it is yet; I will choose it when I see it:

Hmm. I've tried to upload pics four times now, and nothing has happened (as far as I can tell). Ah, more needless frustration in my life. Fuck. Thanks for having me. It's a real treat.